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MEMOIRS OF THE BASTILLE. 



eOllECTANEA ADAMANT/EA. -IV. 



MEMOIRS 



OF 



THE BASTILLE. 

^ran0lateli from tl)Z JFrencf) 

OF THE CELEBRATED 

MR. LINGUET, 

WHO WAS IMPRISONED THERE FROM 
SEPTEMBER 1780, TO MAY 1782. 



EDMUND GOLDSMID, F.R.H.S. 



VOL. I. 



PRIVATELY PRINTED. 
EDINBURGH. 

1884. 



Fr^l 3^-^,^5.7.// 







< , 




Haun, W^Um, «. Vin^^ UmiM, UmUm and Aylesbury. 



4* 



MEMOIRS 

OF THE 

BASTILLE. 

Containing a Full Exposition of the 

MYSTERIOUS POLICY 

AND 

DESPOTIC OPPRESSION 

OF THE 

FRENCH GOVERNMENT, 

In the Interior Administration of 

THAT STATE- PRISON. 
Interspersed with a Variety of 

CURIOUS ANECDOTES. 

Non, mihi si voces centum sint^ oraqite centum 
Omnia pceuaru7n percurrere nomina possim. Virg. 

Translated from the French of 

The Celebrated Mr. LINGUET, 

Who was imprisoned there 
From September, 1780, to May 1 782. 



DUBLIN: 

PRINTED BY J. A HUSBAND, 

for 

Messrs. H. and W. Whitestone, Wilson, Moncrieffe, 

Walker, Burnet, White, Exshaw, Byrne, 

Burton, Cash, Sleater, Junior, 

and Parker. 



M,DCC,LXXXIII. 




Advertisement 

BY THE 

TRANSLATOR. 

r 

I HIS work was wanting to the nomen- 
clature of real State' Crimes \ that is, of 
the sacrifices made by Despotism to tlie 
passions of its agents. 

The Author, Mr. Linguet, was for ten years 
one of the most distinguished Counsellors of the 
Parliament of Paris. He shone equally in oratory 
and composition. It has been remarked, that ot 
a hundred and thirty Causes, all of them im- 
portant, in which he had engaged during that 
period, he lost only nine. His enemies attri- 
buted this unparalleled success to the charms 
of his eloquence ; his more candid judges, to the 
delicacy which directed him in the choice of his 
suits. 

Whilst Mr. Linguet was thus displaying his 



4 .'1 /> I '/A* nSF..\fF.X T. 

useful antl active talents at the Har, be einployetl 
himself likewise in the cultivation of J^oliie /.itt'- 
raturc, and J hilo.u^/'hY. 'I'he lM)l(lncss of his 
principles, the novelty of his views, ami t«>o 
great a freedom in his examination t)f the sys- 
tems estal>lishe<l and the sects prevailing in 
France^ made him powerful enemies, even in 
the Ministry, in that Countr)', where, as it is 
well known, there is at least as much cabal 
and party spirit as in our own ; with this dif- 
ference, that in Ev^Iami the objects are great, 
and the means jniblic ; whereas in France parties 
are formed and imbittered for trifles, and mystery 
presides over intrigue. 

In the revolution which some years ago in- 
terrupted all judicial order in France^ '^\x.Liftguet^ 
having suffered, on the part of the Parliament of 
PariSy and, ultimately, on that of Government 
itself, those shocking injuries of which the par- 
ticulars may be seen in a work which he pub- 
lished three years ago, (*) sought an asylum 
in England. He there undertook a periodical 
work, intitled Annalcs^ Poiitiques, Civiies, «5r» 
Littthraires du iS*"'"' Sit^cU ; which met with a 
very favourable reception throughout Europe. 



* Appel h la PostMh^^ or the first volume of the Col - 
lection of Mr. Lingitefi Works. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 5 

This had been preceded by a printed Letter 
to the Count de Vergennesy one of the French 
Ministers, with whom he had most cause to be 
dissatisfied. This letter has been considered by 
the critics as a striking monument of energy, 
eloquence, and candour. It was of such a 
nature as to leave a deep and lasting impres- 
sion on the mind ; and it was sufficiently evident 
that it has not failed of this effect. 

At the approach of the rupture between Eng' 
land and France^ Mr. Lingiut^ having quitted 
the former, through a patriotic delicacy which 
has been regretted, though not censured, by the 
English ; and having persuaded himself, that on 
the paroU of the Count de Vergennes he might 
go to France to prosecute his interests there ; 
he was arrested, on the 27th of September 1780, 
by virtue of a Lettre'de-cachet, and conducted 
to the Bastille, where he remained full twenty 
months. 

This work contains the history of his im- 
prisonment, that of the proceedings of those 
Ministers who have been accomplices in it, and 
a description of the regimen of that infernal 
mansion, equally celebrated and dreaded, but 
at the same time as little known as it is 
formidable. 



MEMOIRS 



O F 



THE BASTILLE. 



PART !.♦ 




London^ Dec. 5, 1782. 

Am now in Enij^and : it is necessary 
to prove that my return hither has 
been a measure absolutely indispen- 
sable. — I am no longer at the Bastille : 
it is necessary to prove that I never deserved to be 
there. It is necessary to do more : to demonstrate 
that none have ever deserved it : the innocent, be- 
cause they are innocent ; the guilty, because they 
ought not to be convictetl, judged, and punished, 
but according to the laws, and because at the 



" I have been obliged to write many Notes, several of 
which are rather long. I have adopted the method of 
putting them at the end of the work in the form of Appen- 
dices, referring to them by corresponding figures. This 
method is less distracting to the Reader. 



MEMOIRS OF THE BASTILLE. 7 

BastUie none of the laws are observed, or rather 
they are all violated ; because there are no tor- 
tures, unless perhaps in the infernal regions, which 
will bear to be set in competition with those of the 
Bastille ; and because, if the institution itself may 
in certain cases admit of justification, it is im- 
possible, in any case whatever, to justify the 
regimen of it — It is necessary to shew that this 
regimen, no less disgraceful than cruel, is equally 
repugnant to all the principles of justice and 
humanity, to the manners of the Nation, to the 
mildness which characterises the Royal House of 
France^ and especially to the goodness, the equity 
of the Sovereign who at present fills the throne. 

It is by this discussion that I am going to con- 
secrate the renewal of my toils, my return to my 
painful career. 

The two first articles seem to be merely per- 
sonal, to concern none but myself. It will be 
seen however that they are inseparably connected 
with the third, and that they make an essential 
part of it. They form altogether a series of 
oppressions, a chain of iniquities and grievances, 
of which most assuredly very few instances are to 
be found since the History of Job. 

Should I, in a word, be tliought worthy to 
treat the last article, if I did not begin by clearing 
up the two others? Were I a mere miserable 
refugee, thirsting after vengeance, or a wretched 
criminal branded with the ignominy of a pardon, 
what weight would my claims, however urgent, 
carry with them ? 



8 MEAfO/KS OF 

Hut, oAcr having seen the proofs of my inno- 
ccncc, the world will be more sensibly struck 
with the picture of those horrors from which that 
innocence has been insuHicient to preserve me : 
their concern will still increase, when they reflect 
that there i^. not a Frenchman^ nor even a Foreigner 
of those who visit the kingdom of France^ who can 
assure himself that he shall not one day, in his 
own |)erson exj^erience those very horrors. The 
Bastilles of France have devouretl, they are daily 
devouring, men of all ranks, and of all nations. 
At the avenues of these al)ysses ( I ) might well be 
engraven that memento which is sometimes seen 
inscribed to transitory readers on church-yard 
gates : IloiiU mihi^ eras tibi ! 

Who, in short, can promise himself that he 
shall escape that fate, from which the elevated 
rank of presumptive Heir to the Crown has not 
been sufficient to secure a Louis XII. nor their 
accumulated laurels a CotuU^ (2) or a Luxemburg ; 
nor virtue, nor science, a ^acy^ and so many 
others ; nor the affected stateliness of the Long 
Robe, a Pwelle ; nor the most important public 
services, a Im Bourdonnai£\ nor the right of 
nations so many English^ Germans^ Italians^ b^c, 
whose names, engraven in fits of despondent 
weariness on all parts of those fatal walls, form 
a kind of geographic picture equally diversified 
and alarming, &c. ? It is then, if I may use the 
expression, the character of an epidemic disease, 
formidable to all mankind, that I am going here to 
delineate. Notwithstanding the prodigious number 



THE BASTILLE, g 

of witnesses who have involuntarily visited these 
dungeons, the minutia of their interior are very 
little known : the Memoirs of La Porte ^ of 
Gourville^ of M^^- de St(Ul^ give little or no in- 
formation ; the whole tending only to prove a 
fact difficult to be conceived, that in their time 
this Tartarus^ compared to what it is at present, 
was a kind of Elysium, 

At that time the prisoners received visits, saw 
each other familiarly, and took their walks toge- 
ther : the Officers of the Etat-Major talked and 
eat with them ; they were their comforters, no 
less than their guardians. La Porte speaks, in 
express terms, of the Liberties of the Bastille ; 
that is the name he gives to those alleviations 
which we have just mentioned, and which he and 
all his fellow-sufferers enjoyed. 

And La Porte speaks of the reign of the 
Cardinal de Richelieu : La Porte was, of all men 
in the kingdom, the man the least to be treated 
with moderation. The relentless Minister was 
personally interested either in despotically wrest- 
ing from him a valuable secret of which he was 
the confidant, or in vindictively tormenting him. 
The Bastille had therefore at that time no bitter 
potions of which he would not have drank, no 
tortures which he would not have undergone. Let 
his description be compared with mine. (3) 

How has this increase of barbarities been 
effected ? This I know not ; but woeful ex- 
perience has only too well assured me of its 
reality. Whilst the general manners seem in all 



lo MRAiOIRS OF 

respects to tend rather to softness than to rtgoar ; 
whiUt the reigning; IMnce dUcovers no views hot 
such as arc benevolent ; whilst the sufferings even 
of criminal convicts have been al)ateil, in the 
cominoD prisons, by lenient regulations which his 
orders have produced ; the only solicitude at the 
BastilU is to multiply tortures for the affliction of 
the innocent. The atrociousness of cruelty has 
been enhanced in this, more than it has been 
diminished in the other prisons. 

To reveal this inconceivable depravity is, 
under an equitable Prince, to render its reforma- 
tion indispensable. Thus my last farewell to my 
country is an additional service which I shall 
render it ; my last homage to the virtuous King 
who rules over it, will furnish him with a new 
occasion of doing that good, which constituting 
his delight, is the first object of his pursuit. 

But is there no interdict, to prohibit the dis- 
closure I am about to make? Can I without 
scruple treat the several subjects which I have 
engaged to discuss? Can I in conscience let the 
public into the secret of the terrible mysteries into 
which the 27th of September 1780 has initiated 
me? 

The guardians of the BastilU have not indeed 
at their disposal the waters of Lethe^ to cancel in 
the minds of their victims the remembrance of 
their cruelties; but they try to find a substitute 
for them. Despotism, which makes silence one 
of the torments of the Bastille during the period 
of confinement, endeavours to make a religious 



THE BASTILLE, ii 

duty of it at the termination of that period. 
Every Jonas cast forth from its jaws is compelled 
to SWEAR, that he will never reveal, either directly 
or indirectly, a tittle of what he may have learnt 
or suffered there. 

It is a Magistrate in the habit apparently con- 
secrated to justice, (4) it is men of the Military 
order, decorated with the external badge of an 
honourable service, (5) and of a life devoted to 
the defence of the citizens, who preside at this 
last act of an oppression of which they have been 
the instnmients. Shewing the captive, half- 
revived, the door which alone can completely 
restore him to life, half-open, and ready instantly 
to close upon him again if he hesitates ; they 
leave him no alternative, but those of silence, 
perjury, or death. 

O ye well-informed of every Nation, rigid 
casuists who know what honour and delicacy 
prescribe, pronounce : Because my hands have 
been unjustly bound, must my pen be restrained 
too ? Certainly not : with one united voice you 
decide, that the infraction of that scandalous en- 
gagement is no perjury ; that it is the exaction, 
not the violation of it, which constitutes the 
guilt. 

You have absolved the celebrated Dillon for 
having snapped the reins that had been fabricated 
by a religious Inquisition, which, having pre- 
cisely the same principles as this political one, 
employs the same resources to bury the disgrace 
and the scandal of them. You are unanimous in 



13 A/F.A/O/A'S OF 

renewing, an<l rcmlering for ever sacretl. that 
axiom, so dear to society, that axiom, which, 
once fi>rgottcn, woulil give tot) unlimited a sco|)c 
to miscreants armed with jxjwer, "That the in- 
stitution of an oath was intended to give stability 
to lawful conventions ; to insure the ol)servance of 
the laws ; and not to defend, or assist in per- 
petuating, the abuses which infringe them." 

^ Jp* ^ t:A tok tos tok tok tok to» tos tos tos ^ ^ ^ ^ 

SECTION I. 

A/y Kttum to England a measure of necessity. 

AFTER what had passed in 1777 l^etween the 
Count de Vergennes and me, (6) that Minister 
was, of all the Politicians in Europe, the one with 
whom I ought to have had the least concern. 
However, at the approach of the rupture between 
France and England^ in March 1778, reckoning 
upon the reputation which he had acquired for 
personal delicacy and private probity, I thought I 
might run the risk of writing to him, to communi- 
cate to him my unwillingness to remain in a 
country which was going to become the enemy 
of my own : I requested to be informed whether, 
on changing my residence upon so patriotic a 
principle, I might not have new persecutions to 
apprehend from the French Ministry. I concluded 
with these words : 



THE BASTILLE. 13 

" I am perfectly sensible that the present situa- 
" tion of affairs will not permit me to indulge 
** the hope of immediate reparation : but my 
** heart would rest contented with that which the 
" Public is making me, if, in transplanting myself, 
** I could reckon on the enjoyment of repose ; and 
** I should reckon upon ii if I had your word of 
** honour as a pledge. 

'* You will pardon me, after my innocence has 
** been well, perhaps too well proved, that I think 
** it necessary to take this precaution for my 
** safety : but such is the misfortune of my posi- 
** tion ; and I dare believe that you will not be 
'* displeased with me on this account. If I distrust 
** the Ministry, you see what confidence I place in 
** the Minister." 

The 20th of the same month, the Count de 
Vergennes answered me in these terms, "You 
** communicated to me. Sir, &c. The Count de 
** Maurepas^ to whom I have imparted it, etttirely 
** approves the resolution ; and he authorises me 
" to signify to you, that you may banish all un- 
" easiness on this head, .... I think. Sir, that 
** under this assurance you may take such steps as 
** you shall judge most convenient. / would not 
<* give it to you, if I did not absolutely consider it^ 
** myself, as very certain" 

The 7th of April following, I asked of the 
Count de Vergennes a further explanation ; I made 
a further sacrifice, more painful perhaps, more 



14 MFMO/RS Of 

noble I can %ay with ctmfidcncc, than even that of 
my residence. (7) The Count </<• VW^^nms^ the 
ajd, writes me for answer : ** I have received, 
** Sir, your letter ; u|x>n which I can only confirm 
" to you what I have signified in my last, which 
" announces to you, as well on the part of the 
** Count d€ Maurcpus^ as on my own, an entire 
" SAFETY FOR YOUR PERSON in the ncw habila- 
" tion which you propose to yourself. I repeat 
** to you very cordially the assurance of it, and 
" that oi Uavingit in your option to continue your 
** literary labours ; being well convinced that 
** neither the King^ Religion^ nor the State^ will 
'' be attacked therein." 

Upon this safe-guard, solemn as we have just 
seen it, well authenticated, and totally uncondi- 
tional, I quitted England. I settled at Brussels. 
I made several journeys to France in 1778 and 
1779. I saw the Ministers. The Annals con- 
tinued to have a circulation not less free than 
honourable ; and I presume to say, that in no 
work which Literature has produced, have the 
King, Religion^ and the State, been more scrupu- 
lously respected. 

The 27th of Sept. 1780, however, having been 
inveigled to Paris by a series of treacherous arti- 
fices, some of which I shall instance elsewhere, I 
found myself arrested in broad day-light, and this 
with studied and complicated circumstances of 
ignominy ; (8) plunged into dungeons which in 
appearance are destined exclusively for the enemies 



THE BASTILLE, 15 

of the King^ or Religion, and of the State ; and 
given up, in my person, in my honour, and in my 
fortune, to every indignity in which barbarous 
jailors, licentious calumniators, greedy prostitutes, 
and faithless agents, could indulge themselves. 

At the expiration of twenty months, without 
any kind of mitigation, or explanation, my captivity 
apparently ended on the 19th of May 1782 ; when 
in reality it only assumed a different form. The 
Lieutenant-general of the Police of Paris^ coming 
with great parade to announce to me that I was 
no longer a prisoner^ signified to me that I was 
exiled: he delivered me an order which banished 
me to a little town at the distance of forty leagues 
from Paris^ with a prohibition to depart from it 

ON PAIN OF DISOBEDIENCE. 

Though they did not deign to be more explicit 
on the motive of my exile than on that of my 
imprisonment ; though I had the greatest reason 
to believe that this recent blow was levelled by 
the Ministry, not by the King, I submitted to it 
without demur. I asked only two favours very 
simple : the one, permission to stay at Paris^ at 
least till I should have recovered strength sufficient 
to remove from it, and have drawn what was neces- 
sary for my subsistence out of hands more than 
suspicious, which by strange manoeuvres were 
become possessed of almost all my property ; the 
other, to go to spend some days at Brussels, in 
order to put an end to the confusion which for two 
years past had been mouldering away the rest of 
my fortune. 



i6 AfF..\fO/RS OF 

I ought the rather to have hopc<l for a com- 
pliance with these two rc<iuests. as the tlisonler I 
had to remetly proceeded directly from the Frnich 
Ministry. They had causeil to l)e ministerially 
demanded at Brussels^ in the name of the fCinf^ of 
France^ by the Char^t^tf affains of France^ (9) 
seconded by an Exempt of the Police of Parisi 
(10) and by a Deputy whom I shall elsewhere 
name (11) the remittance not only of my pa per s^ 
but of my money : and what they did not carry 
away, they dissipated. They paid, at my expence, 
the travelling expences of the Under-minister, (12) 
of the Exempt in chief, of the Exempt en second : 
they paid a guard, whose service consisted in 
pillaging, under pretence of preserving : they paid 
the Officers of the country, eager to dispute with 
the foreign Officers the proj^rty of which they were 
despoiling me ; and French injustice was lavish of 
my money towards the justice of Brabant. 

Having, moreover, on the recovery of my 
existence, a new present to make to my country ; 
having to give experimental proof of an invention 
extremely valuable ; to realise, for public utility, 
a project I had devised for rendering the light 
subservient to a purpose yet unknown, and that at 
a time when my eyes were strangers to it ; the 
confidence with which I expected the modification, 
nay the revocation of my exile, was certainly not 
ill-founded. 

Curiosity procured me a short respite on the 
first point ; and it was not left ungratified. I 
made the experiment; it succeeded. (13) That 



THE BASTILLE. 17 

very day, I received the injunction, Depart for 
Rethel^ ami stir not thence ; though, in order to 
obtain permission to go to Brussels, I would have 
pledged m3rself, verbally, and in writing, to return 
immediately ; though for a month past I had 
incessantly renewed the promise, already offered 
from the bottom of my tomb, not, as some of the 
public prints have had the weakness or the 
malignity to give out, to write only in subserviency 
to the vieios of the French Ministry^ but 
absolutely not to write any more, if that were 
required of me ; to shut myself up in total silence, 
provided that, in lieu of this sacrifice, the common 
rights of a Citizen at least were restored to me ; 
(14) provided that, for consenting to remain 
useless to society, since that was exacted of me, 
they would cease to treat me more rigorously than 
so many men who are a burthen to it. I tempered, 
in short, these entreaties, and these offers, with a 
degree of meekness and submission, at which 
impartial men who were privy to my conduct were 
almost offended ; and some of them were inclined 
to think, that at length my heart was subdued, or 
my understanding had given way, under the excess 
of misfortune. 

They were mistaken : my conduct at this 
juncture differed not from that which I had 
observed on every other occasion of my life : I 
have never had recourse to measures calculated to 
attract the public eye, till I had tried every 
imaginable way of avoiding them. 

And here it was not till I was left without a 

2 



i8 Mh\\/()/h'S OF 

shallow of doubt that n plan had l)ccn formed to 
embitter the rest of my days, to complete the 
desliuction <»f evtry kind i)f resource which yet 
remoineil to me, in setjuestering me alike from my 
friends and my concerns, that I at leni^th deter- 
mined on a step become indis{>ensibly necessar)'. 

Even then I Hstened to the sciuples of a loyal 
subject, who resi>ects the name of his Prince, in 
the very abuses which his Ministers dare to make 
of it. Returning to Brussfls^ I had at first no 
idea of seeking any other retreat. Though struck 
with horror at the devastation of my house, with 
indignation at the innumerable instances of mean- 
ness and infidelity committed l)y the Ministerial 
Agents who had flocked thither to treat my effects 
as my person had been treated at J^arts ; I 
contented myself with regretting my losses, and 
gathering together the wrecks of my fortune. My 
only wish was, to find some means of diverting 
my grief. 

I had in contemplation a journey of several 
years : after having paid my homage at the feet of 
a Prince who gives such exemplary lessons of real 
greatness to all other Princes, and who restores to 
the throne of the Casars a degree of lustre with 
which it is long since any throne has been graced ; 
my intention was to travel into //a/y, to try to 
forget, in the study of the monuments of past ages, 
what I have suffered in the present. 

This indirect method of acting in conformity to 
the views of the French Ministry was not however 
allowed me. I was informed by some faithful 



THE BASTILLE. 19 

friend, that not to have piqued myself on an 
obedience perfectly literal, was with them no 
venial offence ; and that by ambuscades prepared 
on my way, the road to Italy would, to me, 
infallibly become the road back to the Bastille. 

As I received this intelligence from the same 
hand which had forewarned me of the first Lettre- 
de-ccuhet (for such warning I had received, though 
I had refused to listen to it) I thought it not 
prudent to brave a second. Between these 
Ministerial boons and me I have placed a barrier 
too wide for them to clear. My real protectors, 
those who have contributed to my safety, will 
doubtless not be displeased that I have taken 
effectual precautions to preserve the fruit of their 
kindness. If there are others who consider those 
precautions with resentment, by that very re- 
sentment they prove their necessity. 

I would ask now of all honest and impartial 
men, What could I have done, which I have not 
done ? What have I done, which I have not been 
obliged to do ? 

Let them deign to reflect a moment on the 
circumstances which have accompanied and fol' 
lowed the restitution of my liberty. What ! to 
the order for my departure from Paris^ where I 
had business of the last emergency, subjoin 
another, prohibiting me from going to Brussels^ 
where concerns not less important demanded my 
presence ! The only answer to the prayers, the 
offers, the very humiliations, by which I hoped to 
obtain a dispensation from one of those two 



ao AfFAfOIKS OF 

injunctions, is a thir»l, condcmninp me, after a 
itale of inactivity, to a suR|>cns!on of existence, of 
two years duration, to continue to vcjjetate in the 
gl<M)iny recess of an obsaire l)orou|;h, in irksome 
and fatal indolence. These are the favours, the 
bounties, that succee<l to an oppression un- 
preceilcnted in all its circumstances ! 

What could Ik* the object of them ? Was it to 
Dunish me ? Alas for what ! What was my 
crime? Had they ever told me? Did they even 
then tell me ? The justice they had at length so 
reluctantly rendered me, sufficiently proved my 
innocence. Who will believe, that if they could 
have conjured up the shadow of a pretence for 
loading me with perpetual chains, they would 
have broken those to which they had destined me 
without any pretence? A malefactor convicted 
and condemned may indeed receive as a favour 
the migitation of his punishment : but an inno- 
wnt man ! 

Was it my duty to consider this caprice of the 
Ministry as a mark of patenial attention ? They 
certainly did not affect to treat me as those are 
treated, who having long been deprived of sus- 
tenance, are become voracious in their appetite. It is 
by slow degrees that a skilful Physician prescribes 
to such patients that nourishment in which too 
sudden and liberal an indulgence might expose 
them to suffocation. In all probability it was not 
the sudden effect of too free an air that was 
apprehended on my account ; it was not to render 
the regimen of liberty more salutary to me, that 



THE BASTILLE. 21 

they had the delicacy to restore me to it only by 
Imperceptible gradations. 

If this political diet had an object, it was not 
to me that they meant to spare the dangers of it. 
What it was really designed to prevent, was the 
explosion of those sighs which had been accumu- 
lating during two twelve months of despair ; it was 
the first aspirations of a heart tortured during that 
period with such cool barbarity, with so composed 
a n^lect of every thing that was just : it was my 
well-grounded complaint against a species of 
violence which has cut off two years of my life ; 
against those outrages, of which the effects will 
curtail the remainder of it ; against a sort of 
treatment which ever has been, and perhaps ever 
will be, without example, even at the Bastille^ 
This is what they dreaded. 

But, not to have made of this precaution a new 
outrage, an additional iniquity, it was at least 
necessary to have reconciled it with the arrange- 
ment of my personal affairs, with the care of 
my domestic concerns. I was suing neither for 
pension, nor indemnity, nor appointment ; I solicited 
nothing but permission to collect the fragments of 
my property, wantonly attacked, and still more 
wantonly dissipated. Without this permission ; 
pillaged by the substitutes of the French Ministry, 
of the French Police; ruined by a perfidious Agent, 
unable to recover the arrears due to me, to remedy 
past, or prevent future depredations ; how was I 
to have subsisted at Rethel Mazarine ? Are these 
Ldtre5'de'ccu:het^ then. Letters of exchange ? 



ja AfFAfO/^S, OF 

It has W'vn puMickly intimatcil, that when I was 
put to the final te^t, rewards were held out to me ; 
tliat, if I had endured with resignation this last act 
of my martyrdom, coronets were prcjwring for 
me ; but that I had rejected all with disdain, 
preferring the blind cxj>ectation of revenge to the 
peaceable enjoyment of those benefactions which 
would have been a full indemnity for my mis- 
fortunes. 

Nothing can l)c more false. The only re- 
compence which was announced to me was the 
chance of /^wr«/>/^ />«/ t/ay or other^ afUr being 
for a long time very obeiHent, THE TRUE CAUSE OF 
MY CONKINRMKNT. It was by a man in favour 
that this allurement was offered to me. A man 
in place contented himself with saying, If you wish 
to live here, try to liE forc.otten. 

I judged it more easy, more safe, more neces- 
sary, to try to make my escape : but I once more 
declare ; obsequious even in my apparent dis- 
ol)edience; still cherishing, and revering, the bands 
from which however those of the Bastille had but 
too fully absolved me ; it was in the vicinity of 
my country, it was in a territory which (if I may 
so express myself) is a continuation of it, that I 
should have been content to seek a retreat, if this 
could have been insured me ; and nothing but the 
excess of prevarication, and of danger, could have 
driven me back to the inaccessible asylum where 
I now am, and which I ought never to have 
quitted. 

Those who are alarmed, perhaps not without 



THE BASTILLE, 23 

cause, at the retreat and the independence which 
I now enjoy, will not fail to arm themselves with 
the only specious pretext which could serve the 
purposes of their malignity. They will accuse me 
of ingratitude and revolt : they will say, that if no 
State-crime is to be found in my past conduct, the 
choice of my present asylum is one : they will 
paint as a criminal escape the effort which they 
have rendered indispensible : they will produce, 
as a proof of the justness of those prepossessions 
which they opposed to the restitution of my liberty, 
the use which they have forced me to make of it, 
and the exercise of a faculty which, they will say, 
it was in their power to with- hold from me. 

That it was in their power to with-hold it, is 
not to be doubted. Men possessed of force have 
it always in their option to retain, without limita- 
tion of time, what they have seized without colour 
of right: nothing is more clear. But that is not 
the point in agitation. 

The question is only, on the one hand, whether, 
because a groundless captivity has not been an 
endless one too, I ought blindly to have submitted 
to the continuation of that rigour which originated 
in iniquity ; and on the other hand, whether 
having estimated the validity of a prohibition 
repugnant to reason and justice, and in which it 
is impossible to suppose the King had any partici. 
pation. I could have thought myself secure, any 
where else but in England, against that Ministerial 
despotism which had not respected even its own 
solemn protection ? 



U4 Aff.AfOIKS OF 

The engagement, totally useless, but Yerjr 
authentic, which was signed in the name of the 
Count dt MaurtpaSy who no longer exists, by the 
Count de Vergtntus^ who is still in existence, must 
not be forgotten : by this engagement, as hath 
l>cen seen alwve, the safety of my person was 
guaranteed, not, as is pretended, for a limited 
time^ but for ever, and without any restriction, 
or at least without any other restriction, even 
implied, than that, with which most assuredly I 
have not failed in my compliance, of continuing to 
respect the King^ Religion^ and the State, 

Has the King been left unapprised of this basis 
of my security in his dominions? or rather, in 
traducing me to him in order to destroy the 
esteem with which he honoured me, in order 
to determine him to that rigour to which the 
truth would certainly not have induced him, have 
they persuaded him that this barrier ought to 
l)e no obstacle to that rigour? Of this I know 
nothing. 

What I do know is, that with my protection 
and my innocence, under a mild and an equitable 
reign, I have been treated, during two years, not 
as a person accused, pre- admonished of some 
offence ; (for against such a man an action is 
commenced ; he is informed of the accusation on 
which it is grounded ; he is allowed to make his 
defence ;) but as a delinquent convicted of IJigh 
Treason, with every concomitant aggravation. 
Now, the parole of the Ministers of J-rauce, and 
the rectitude of my conduct, having failed me as 



THE BASTILLE, 25 

guarantee for the past, when their vindictive 
perfidy was left without a pretext ; what had I 
to expect in future, whilst I remained in the vicinity 
of France^ after having, by a measure lawful 
indeed, and necessary, but contrary to their will, 
furnished, according to the rules of their im- 
placable despotism, a specious pretext for some 
further oppression? I could not flatter m3rself 
that I should be less reprehensible : could I 
expect that they would become more religiously 
scrupulous ? 

Circumstanced as I then was, had I a free 
choice of my retreat? Could, I or ought I to 
have hesitated between the BastilU and Great 
Britain ? After having quitted without disgrace, 
perhaps with glory, this generous Nation, might I 
not without remorse come back to implore its 
protection ? 



^^^^^^^^^to.^^^to.^to.|. 



SECTION II. 

My Confinement had no just Motive. 

FAIRLY acquitted of the charge of ingratitude 
or revolt in the use I have made of the liberty 
restored to me, I think I ought not to suffer a 



a6 AfHMO/KS OF 

shadow of doubt to subsist with regard to the 
causes which dcpriveil me of it, or rather with 
regard to the real fact, which is, that there has 
l)een no cause which could be rationally assigned 
for the abuNC of power, of which that privation 
has been the result. A summary discussion of 
this matter is what I owe to myself, to my 
friends, to the confidence of those honest men, 
who, judging of my disposition by their own, 
have, on the sole presumption of my innocence, 
constantly engaged in my defence. To them I 
must demonstrate, that in this prepossession they 
have not been mistaken. 

My reputation has been too long consigned to 
the fury of my enemies, who were then under 
no apprehensions of being refuted ; and to the 
licentiousness of news-writers, justified, it is true, 
by the parade and the rigour of my imprisonment. 
How indeed could they imagine, that under a 
government not absolutely atrocious, and parti- 
cularly under a King whose good designs are 
sufficiently evident, a degree of treatment so 
severe should be without an adequate cause? 

A foreign Minister, who interested himself 
warmly in my behalf, as well from his own 
inclination, as by the special command of his 
sovereign, told me, at the time of my release, 
that no State-Affair had ever been more gravely 
discussed than mine was ; and that in spite of his 
propensity to believe me innocent, he had con- 
cluded, from the manner in which he was silenced 
whenever he renewed his solicitations, that I was 



THE BASTILLE. 27 

guilty of some treasonable offence, of which it was 
a mark of great lenity in government not to preci- 
pitate the chastisement. 

All those, indeed, who made any efforts in my 
favour, found a like reception. At one time a 
chilling silence ; at another, some tokens of pity 
and r^^et ; now encomiums, even, which seemed 
to indicate a friendly disposition towards me, 
rendered ineffectual by causes exceedingly ter- 
rible ; then half-words, which left a boundless 
and very melancholy scope to the imagination, on 
the enormity of the offence, and on the duration 
as well as justice of the punishment ; — that is 
what my friends experienced from men in place ; 
from those, at least, to whom it could not be 
supposed the real motives of my confinement 
were unknown. 

It is inconceivable, I confess, not only that the 
object of a system of intrigue like this, should in 
the issue prove absolutely innocent, but that he 
should never have been even arraigned : it is no 
less so, that in giving up his person to such 
treatment as crimes of the greatest magnitude, 
established on the clearest evidence, would hardly 
have justified, they should with an unfeeling dis- 
regard sacrifice his honour likewise to public 
wantonness and malignity ; that they should au- 
thorise that malignity to consider, to give out, 
as a proof of his delinquency, the. iniquitous 
rigour with which he was overwhelmed ; that 
the authors of those perfidious insinuations should 
be those very men who best knew the iniquity, 



a8 AfHMOJKS OF 

ami the dan{^r of them ; in a word, that ihb 
danger and this iniquity should constitute a part 
of their vindictive schemes, of the selHsh plan to 
which they meant to render these injurious false- 
hoods lulMervtent. 

It is inconceivable that a Ministry capable of 
cruelties so refmed, so uniformly persevered in, 
and of such profound hypocrisy, should exist ; that 
men engaged, or supposed to be engaged, in the 
most im(X)rtant public affairs, should find time to 
concert so scandalous an imposition ; that they 
should thus colleague to deceive at once the 
Prince who honours them with his confidence, 
and the Public who are witnesses of their conduct ; 
that they should enter into a confederacy to effect, 
by such machinations, the destruction — of whom ? 
Of a private individual, an irreproachable character, 
whose only fault has been to have too tenderly 
loved his country, and to have had too implicit a 
confidence in their plighted word. This, however, 
is a fact no less true than astonishing. 

I know not (I must say it again) what may 
have been told to the King ; what calumnies may 
have been employed to make the apparent 
necessity of crushing me, as if by a thunder-clap, 
preponderate in his mind against the pleasure he 
appeared to take in reading my works, and the 
propensity he had to protect me. Not a word of 
this has ever been communicated to me : during 
my twenty months confinement, I have never 
undergone the shadow of an interrogatory, not the 
least appearance of an examination. And here 



THE BASTILLE. 29 

in the face of ^l Europe^ I solemnly defy the 
French Ministers to produce one single act, to 
prove that in their proceedings against me they 
have regarded the least formality. 

My enlargement, as hath already been shewn, 
was accompanied with the same mystery : in the 
order of exile the same silence has been observed : 
so that I know not precisely against what to 
justify myself; since I am absolutely ignorant of 
what they might have laid to my charge. 

This very silence, observed towards a man who 
was languishing under every species of aggravated 
cruelty, in which a full and striking conviction is 
implied, bespeaks, doubtless, a strong prepossession 
in his favour. It is what all laws universally 
proscribe; what is no where allowed but at the 
Bastille ; and what perhaps, even there, except in 
my case alone, they have never dared to venture 
upon. The nullity or the falsehood of accusation 
would need no other proof. 

But what is more, what will effectually remove 
the last degree of doubt, is, that I have been 
incessantly told at the Bastille, that my confine- 
ment originated in the immediate and direct will 
of the King ; that I was not a man so obscure, so 
insignificant, that such a stroke of authority would 
have been hazarded against me without his 
consent. This is the sacred barrier that has been 
constantly opposed to my endeavours to attain, if 
not the full discovery, at least a partial glimpse, 
of the ground, so cautiously concealed, of my 
imprisonment. It is, then, on some kind of 



30 AfHXfOJKS Of 

(lclin(iucncy, on some express ami ix>>itive accusa- 
tion, that this will, this consent, have l)een founded. 

Ah, ye audacious calumniators ! whose attempt 
to rob me of the esteem of that Protector whom 
nature and providence had {;iven me, might have 
prevailed, it is before his footstool that 1 summon 
you : it is in the presence of liim whose honest 
anil liberal soul you have abused, that I impeach 
you. If you have said any thing to him, which 
could for a moment bring in question my loyalty 
to his person, my devotion to his interests, my 
horror for every kind of intrigue in general, and 
esi)ccially for such as might have had an opposite 
tendency ; I declare to you in formal terms, that 
every word you have uttered has been a lye. 

Do not Hatter yourselves that you will be able 
to shrink from my representations, under the veil, 
so often profanetl, of respect due to Secrets of 
State : do not deceive yourselves in the vain hope 
that this will conceal the springs of your fraudu- 
lent despotism, as the Bastille conceals its opera- 
tions. No ; I will pursue you into that asylum 
which you pollute : I will there resound, without 
ceasing, these words, so terrible to you, and to 
which perhaps the equitable Monarch, in whose 
presence I address them to you, will not be 
insensible : ** You have basely imposed upon him. 
** My conduct and my writings have always been 
"incorrupt as my heart." 

You have suffered it to be said, to l>e affirmed, 
to be printed in all the public papers, **That I 
** had composed and communicated Memoirs 



THE BASTILLE, 31 ^ 

''calculated to draw embarassing claims upon 
"France, or at least to awaken the desire of 
"asserting them.'* This is the rumour which I 
found to have most generally obtained, on my 
resurrection from my grave : this is the opprobrium 
to which you had devoted my ashes, if, in spite of 
your endeavours, an all-powerful hand had not 
snatched me out of it. 

Perhaps your view in opposing yourselves to 
my return to Brussels^ was still to confirm, to 
give additional credit to that falsehood, so criminal, 
^nd so absurd. Perhaps, after having had the 
cunning to render it probable in the eyes of those 
whom you wished to deceive, you have had that 
too of retarding an klatrdssenutU between the two 
Sovereigns whom it concerned, and of preventing 
an explanation by which I should have been 
justified. 

Nay, perhaps dreading the protection with 
which I was honoured by the august and virtuous 
Princess who is the band of their union, you have 
forged this calumny merely to reduce her to silence 
when my affair should be the object of discussion. 
. Consort of the one, and sister of the other, till 
facts were cleared up, she must have been cautious 
of appearing to interest herself for a man suspected 
of having failed of his duty alike towards them 
both : and how were those facts to be cleared, 
when on the delicate subject, on which you had 
raised suspicions, it was so easy to elude an eclair- 
cissement. 

Your interest, however, will not enable you to 



3fl AfHMOIRS OF 

stifle this my solemn protestation. Exclusively 
limitcil in my literary toils, I have indulged myself 
in no other |)olitical speculations whatever, but 
those I have published in the Antuxls : and, for 
the sake of refuting the falsehtxxi which you have 
either invented, or toleratetl, I here presume to 
invoke that august Sovereign whose name is called 
in (}uei»tion. Far from giving myself up to that 
unaccountable madness which would have disposed 
me to foretell and to justify the dismemberment 
of France^ it is in her lx>som that with unceasing 
views I have l)een preparing myself a retreat : it 
is on her prosj>eriiy that I have perpetually rested 
the dependance of my own, till the very moment 
in which you have requited the tenderest attach- 
ment with torments scarcely reserved for her most 
implacable enemies ; till that moment, of all her 
children none has been more affectionately obedient, 
of all her subjects none more scrupulously faithful. 
If I had ever conceivetl the idea of a sentiment 
different from those I here unfold, some traces of 
it must doubtless still exist. Ah I dare then to 
disclose them ; bring forth into open day : ransack 
your bureaux ; put in motion the priviledged spies 
whose clandestine zeal you have so dearly paid. 
If at length I am found guilty, the boldness of my 
denial will ultimately excite, in those with whom 
the proofs of my perfidy are deposited, a degree 
of indignation proportioned to the contempt with 
which my original treachery would have inspired 
them in the beginning : they will be eager to assist 
you in bringing to confusion an hypocritical im- 



THE BASTILLE. 33 

poster, who should dare to flatter himself that he 
could impose on your indulgence, who should so 
strenuously endeavour to reconcile the appearance 
of virtue with the stratagems of iniquity. There 
is neither State-concern, nor State-secret^ which can 
possibly be an obstacle to discoveries that would 
be so dear to you. 

But far, very far, am I from fearing, them ! 
My conduct, as my works in general, without the 
least exception, has constantly borne the stamp of 
one uniform sentiment ; I mean, that of a patriotic 
enthusiasm, a delicacy on this point, carried to the 
extreme. Here, my tongue, my pen, and my 
heart, have been invariably in unison. Here I 
have left no alternative, but those of refuting me 
upon facts, or of acknowledging how odious, how 
criminal, have been those artifices which could for 
a moment render my innocence problematical. 

But has my private correspondence been equally 
unexceptionable as my public conduct ? Have I not 
been guilty of some internal act of imprudence, 
some secret indiscretion, sufficient to justify the 
animadversion of government? Have I not 
shocked some man in power, to whose rank some 
reparation may have been judged due ? This is 
the last resource of my persecutors : it is also the 
last stroke of that fatality which has destined me 
to be a model of passive oppression in every possible 
way. 

Is it not strange, after what I have suffered 
from the fury of Corporations, from the prevarica- 
tion of men in place, that I should be obliged to 

3 



^ MKAHUkS OF 

vindicate myself on Mich an occasion as this ; to 
^ivc an account of every si^^h which indignation 
has cxtorteti from me, of all the convulsions which 
grief has thiown me iiilo ? I must not however 
decline the emuncr.Uum ; Uuh Ixxrause it is neces- 
sary, ami l»ecause it will complete the discovery of 
all those enormities, of all that a)wardice, of which 
I have l)een the victim. 

The only complaint, of the kind last mentioned, 
which has been communicated to me, that which 
has l)cen presented to me as the sole cause of my 
confinement, is a letter to the Marshal dc Duras. 
I pretend not to justify it, and its discussion would 
be useless : but it was a private letter, which 
concerned him otily in his private character ; a 
letter, which had been challenged, and even 
necessitated by a sort of conduct more reprehen- 
sible than the letter itself was violent ; a secret 
letter, which I have never expo«ed ; a letter which 
1 have never denied to have written, because I am 
not capable of a lye, but which the Marshal de 
Duras y at least in public, has always denied to 
have received ; a letter of which he constantly 
averred he had made no complaint ; of which he 
had in fact made so little, that, notwithstanding 
my requisitions, they could not pro<luce me the 
original ; and which, consequently, could by no 
means constitute the ground of any suit or punish- 
ment whatsoever ; a letter, in short, upon which 
my answer, when I was asked if I had written it, 
ought to have put Hatred to the blush, and made 
Vengeance drop her arms. ( 1 7) 



THE BASTILLE. 35 

Whatever it was, it is evident that the exposure 
of it could alone render it criminal ; and it had not 
been exposed. Whatever it was, though it had 
even been published with as much scandal as that 
which accompanied my confinement, it was no 
State-crime, Whatever it was certainly it could 
not have justified twenty months imprisonment in 
the Bastille^ with a continuance of the most 
atrocious treatment of which that infernal precinct 
had even been the theatre. 

I am well aware that my readers will be curious 
to know the tenour of this piece, so fatal, and so 
mysterious ; and, were I sensible to the thirst of 
vengeance alone, I should certainly make it public. 
But, here again I am tenacious of my respect even 
for the intentions of the King : my letter no sooner 
appears to move his displeasure, than I abandon 
it ; I sacrifice it to the opinion which he entertains 
of it, setting no higher value on this last homage, 
than the satisfaction of having paid it. (18) 

But in the cabinet of the French Ministers there 
exists another letter, "which has contributed, perhaps 
in a greater degree than the former, to my mis- 
fortune. This, however, they have taken effectual 
care to keep back from the eyes of the King : if, 
indeed, it had been laid before him, it would have 
secured me against all I have suffered. I was 
never so much as once reminded of it ; but, as 
I have not a doubt that it had much greater 
influence, than the other, on the resolution of 
the Ministry; as it is evident, that in making 
use of the former to irritate the mind of the 



K.r.tz '"•'7 ^^- '"^ iiixn-r'jc :: Zizooal 
:.:n Mtf .irr-r w*.cn c:ti.«i .iLy ilxrs 
v^ceri:^ i^> M.n^-^r^r*. I xsi x :ct:i-»:« thit I 

: y !-'.< Mxr*i:a. i. /'•tra. :r wx* ^iiiroited to 
M. /- .*./« -. l^fr^Z£fui:it. ct lie PoLcie, ihrow^h 
»h« •< honii* 'JK .-IsauJ'v ry^ jrly passed, m 
orict tj be i<i;Trr«»: -^ the iatnbator. 

I: :a r-«rc:ri3ax7 :. rsvi.il^t:!. ±a.: m Mirdl, I770i» 
*Jse 5->th iSfi ooch. N33;b<rs hjAi been succxsKwtij 
K-rffoi. i: :h< 4.;C.oiii:j.c ^>i :hc Marshal dEr 
ZhtriL:, ir-»i tbc f^r.i^ntrm: jf P,in:. The fint 
iapprc&»icc I Ll.! pooer.tlT suboii::ed to : oo the 
setuol I mrocc. the 7th c«i April, I7&\ to the 
Marshal] j> />wri.. :h« letter which he does not 
hja>i aiU/ct, Q^>r I neither ; and oc the morrow, to 
M. /^ .\'i»>. thit which kftluWK. 

firujj^ij. April 8> I78O1 
" SIK. 

" After having, in my letter 01 yesterday. giTcn 
** way. to an imii^^nation too well founded, I am 
** g''^"^ ^o make some further efforts in the name 
** of justice anil reason ; though I have learnt, 
** to my cost, how little weight they have in 
** Fratue against interest anvi intrigue. The fol- 
•* lowing is a short memorial, which I entreat 
** you to lay l»efore the eyes of the Ministers : 
'* they will not fail to impute it, still, to my 
** obstinacy : but I presume it should be ascribed 
** to the goodness of my cause. 



THE BASTILLE, 37 

** I cannot conceive that the Marshal de Duras 
would wish to figure any longer in public. I 
confess, that nothing can be added to what the 
Count Desgrie has told him : however, it is 
something to repeat it, and to remark to the 
Public, that the Marshal has obtained no 
satisfaction for it. It appears to me, that in 
his situation, he ought, of all things, to avoid 
making a noise in the world ; and he is going 
to make more than he has ever done in his 
life. 

** Be this as it may, I can only repeat to you* 
what I have already had the honour of saying 
to you several times, on my aversion to be 
again involved in the bickerings of past times, 
on the ardent desire I have of being no more 
exposed to them ; but, at the same time, on the 
courage with which I shall support myself under 
them. It will cost me my fortune ; but I am 
accustomed to sacrifices. 

** The sale of the N«». LIX. and LX. of the 
Annales has been stopped at Paris : they are 
published and circulated in England^ in Holland^ 
in Germany^ in the Law- Countries ; and even in 
France by the pirates who counterfeit them. To 
suppress in Paris only the genuine edition, 
whilst all the others are tolerated, and even 
encouraged, is to do an act of injustice at once 
very shocking, and totally useless : it will not 
hinder the prohibited Numbers from finding 
their way into Paris ; it will only render them 
more noted, more sought for, and more valuable : 



,8 MH\fO/KS OF 

•• ihc flfsirt- uf ihcm will l)c only the more lively, 

• * ;itul of K)n(;cr continuance. I don't sec what the 
•* i^artics concernwl have to gain by it. 

** These Nuinlwrs contain nothing censurable; 
** far from it : the 59th might have been infinitely 

• • more severe. I do not imagine that the interests 
*• of the very ridiculous Nephew of M. <^ Leyrit 
** (19) have the least weight in this suppression. 
•• The only object, then, is to spare the Marshal 
•• tU jyurm the disagreeable circumstances of a 
*' mortifying rejection on his alTair. But is that 
** |)cculiar to this Number? or rather, is it not 
*' there that it is soHened, at least to the ad- 
** vantage of the commandant ? 

** When two men, destined by their birth and 
•• condition to give an example of probity in then* 
** actions, and of delicacy in their words, mutually 
*' accuse each other, in the face of all Europe of 
** every kind of kfunf^ry^ and larceny, making use 
** of those very terms ; and when they have 
** recourse to a regular Tribunal to obtain re- 
** paration and justice ; if that Tribunal leaves 
** the affair undecided, it commits at least one 
** act of prevarication, and perhaps two. If one 
*' of the parties is guilty, it is scandalous that he 
** is not punished : if neither of them is so, it is 
** yet more scandalous, that the decree of the 
** Court should encrease suspicions, instead of 
** destroying them ; should stigmatise two innocent 
** men, instead of acquitting them. This is all 
*• that I have said ; and it is upon the judges 
*' that my reflection falls. The Public is not 



THE BASTILLE. 39 

** so indulgent : it is the Writer of Castellan 
** whom it points out as the man really guilty ; 
** and the supplicated suppression of the 59th 
" Number will not reinstate him. 

** As to the contents of N°. LX. they are facts. 
** The vexations of the Parliaments ; their secret 
** tjrrannies ; the support which the Members all 
** think they owe one to the other, and in reality 
" afford one another on occasions where they 
" ought the least to allow themselves to con- 
** found their legal character with their private 
" interests ; — the corruptness of the Secretaries ; 
** their intrigues, their perfidies, their custom of 
** extorting fees on both sides, are notorious 
** matters. As authority does not deign either 
" to punish, or repress these abuses, it is necessary 
** at least that the certainty of not being able to 
** screen them from public censure, should put 
** some kind of restraint upon them : it is the 
"interest of Government; it is the interest of 

* * those very Companies who are degraded by so 
** many excesses. 

** Whilst I wrote from England, I was exposed 
** to none of these broils ; (20) and I wrote things 
** much more forcible. It is however upon the 

* * plan conceived, digested, and executed in Eng' 
** la^dy and well known in France^ that the 
** agreements took place between the Public in 
** France^ the Posts of France^ and myself. It 
** was in conformity to that plan that subscript 
*' tions were opened aftid received ; that the 
'* circulation of the work was authorised ; and 



40 MH.XfOIh'S Of 

•* that the Kinj» accc|>tc<l the coi>ic.s which I 
** adiircsscd immevliatcly to him. It was not 
** stipulated as a condition, that I should respect 
*' the cowardice of the Marshals of Framt^ if 
•* either of them shouM l)e guilty of any, or the 
** prevariaition of the Tribunals. No such terms 
"were proposeil to me; none such should I 
** have accepted. 

** I never meant to subject myself to any 
** Censorial ix)wer : on the contrary, I have loudly 
*' protesteil, I have more than once declared in 
** print, that I would never have any other Censor 
" than my own delicacy. I have not said one 
**word which might subject that to be called in 
•* question. Whence then those trammels in 
** which they take upon them to confine me ? 

' ' Repassing the sea, I have changed my 
** situation, but not my heart : I have without 
"reluctance sacrificed my fortune; I will never 
"sacrifice my independence, nor the prerogatives 
"to which a solemn obligation has entitled me. 
* * I may suffer for my pa^isionate regard for France^ 
" for my confidence in the Ministry of France, for 
** my absolute devotion to my Country : I may be 
"determined, by downright disgust, to leave off 
"writing; but I shall never be reduced to write 
"like a slave. Of all the indemnities due to me 
"from the Government of Frame y that which I 
"l)elieve to be the least costly, and I am sure is 
"the most useful to her, is the freedom of my 
pen 



THE BASTILLE. 41 

This letter I do not doubt, I never have 
doubted, though I have never spoken of it, as the 
real cause of my misfortunes : this is what has 
determined the Ministry of France to seize the 
opportunity of revenge. At the time of my 
departure from England^ they could not refuse to 
the firmness, the integrity of my conduct, the 
solemn protection of which I have spoken ; and 
since that time they have not beeh able to find 
any pretence to violate it. 

Further, I owe this justice to the memory 
of the Count de Maurepas : he was neither 
vindictive, nor inplacable: entirely taken up in 
perpetuating his ease, and his influence, he sought 
no other enjoyment. What was lively in the 
AnnaleSt amused him : what was serious, gave 
him no uneasiness. Perhaps he found a pleasure 
even in the idea that it was himself who had the 
credit of protecting me. 

His agents in administration were not altogether 
of the same way of thinking : some of them still 
bore in mind the letter to the Count de Vergennes^ 
and the portraits that were drawni in it : others 
dreaded the unreserved frankness of the Annates, 
Pick-pockets, says a certain intelligent man, shun 
the light of the lamps. The great success of that 
work, the very respectable suffrages united in its 
favour, the friendly zeal of all those who had 
nothing to fear from it, that, is of all virtuous and 
impartial men, had held Malevolence in chains. 

But when, for the purpose of extorting the 
consent of the old Minister, they had the letter of 



4a \fH.\fOtfiS OF 

the 8ih of April, which was shewn only to him, 
and which he might without difficulty l>e led to 
construe into a menace ; when, to prejudice the 
mind of the young King, they had the other letter 
of the 7th, which likewise was produced only to 
Him, with additions which he alone was to hear ; 
it was easy to fabricate the onler which till then 
they had j^crhaps despaired of obtaining. It will 
not I>c doubted that the business was transacted in 
the manner I have here suggested, when it is 
ctmsidercd that the letter to M. Le Soir is of the 
viiith OK AI'RIL, 1780. and the iMter-de-ccufut of 
the xvith of the same month. But from this 
same date another kind of inference is to be 
drawn. My hand yet starts at the very idea of it ; 
and it is with equal horror, and depression of 
spirits, that I am going to disclose it 

The 1 6th of April 1780, I was not in France. 
I had it in my option never to have returned 
thither : and, if my blind fanaticism for my 
Country ; if my confidence, yet more extrava« 
gant than blind, in a promise of the French 
Ministers, joined to a thousand treacheries, of 
which a specimen will presently be seen, had 
not made me neglect intelligence but too well 
grounded, I never should have returned thither. 
The Lettre-iie-cathet, therefore, might never have 
been put in force. This thunder-bolt, then, was 
forged at a venture, without any knowledge 
whether it would ever produce its effect. The 
French Ministry, it seems, keep these murderous 
weapons in reserve ; they have magazines where 



THE BASrtLLE. 43 

these instruments of its vengeance are deposited ; 
and they can peaceably wait, like the sportsman 
in ambuf h, till the game presents itself of its own 
accord, to receive the shot which he is ready to 
aim for its destruction. 

Nor is this all ; for they imitate the cunning of 
this sportsman no less with respect to the 
preliminaries than to the object. A variety of 
perfidious tricks, some of them more cowardly 
than others, have been successively multiplied to 
conceal from me the snare which had been just 
laid in my way. Is not even the currency 
restored to the Annales in their distribution, im- 
mediately after the i6th of April, one of the most 
criminal kind I 

What ! continue to circulate in public, under 
guarantee of the Royal authority, a work, of 
which the Author had been secretly proscribed, 
and devoted by the Ministers to that disgrace, to 
that severity, which are reserved for the enemies 
of the King and the State ! continue to receive it, 
in order to deliver it to the King, and actually 
deliver it to him ; affect to applaud the marks of 
satisfaction with which he did not cease to honour 
it ; and take special care that I should be ac- 
quainted with this ! 

The same engine by which the news of an 
approbation so flattering was conveyed to me, 
was employed to entice me to Paris. That spy, 
under the mask of a friend, who had been pen- 
sioned by the Police, at my expence, for five 
years past to penetrate into my secrets, having 



44 MK.XfOIRS OF 

learnt that I was not unacquaintcl ^nth this dr- 
cuin>tance, lalKnirctl incessantly to dissipate the 
terror with which it had inspired me, by this 
consideration, that they would not have restored 
lil)crty to the AnnalrSt if they had wished to 
deprive the Author of that of his person ; and 
that I mi^ht jjo into France without any appre- 
hcnsions, as my works were so favourably received 
at IWsaiiii's. Thus the sacred name of the King 
was made use of to facilitate the success of an 
iniquity, of which that very name was to be the 
instrument 1 

This iniquity was not |>er|)etrated till the end of 
six months ; but at the end of six years, of twenty, 
the Lctire-dt'^ichft which authorised it, would 
have had the same efficacy. I was devoted, then, 
for the rest of my life, to undergo, at some time 
or other, the stab of this poignard ; and in extreme 
old-age, when, borne down by calamity, and 
exhausted by toils, I might have come to ask my 
country, as a recompence for so many exertions 
and sacrifices, permission to die there in peace, 
I should have found no gates open to receive 
me but the BastilUy no other sepulchre but its 
dungeons ! 

After these reflections, what, in God's name, 
can we style the Lettre-cU-auhet of the i6th of 
April 1780 1 how describe that eagerness to fabri- 
cate it, and that patience in waiting the moment 
of its execution ! 

Let it now be considered, that an imprisonment 
thus instigated, thus prepared, and thus consum- 



THE BASTILLE. 45 

mated, has lasted near Two years ; that it has 
done me an injury, almost equally irreparable, 
in my property, and in my health ; that, if it has 
not totally ruined me in my civil capacity, and 
closed my life at an untimely period, I owe this 
to a peculiar favour of Providence, which, having 
apparently destined me to the task I am now 
performing, I mean, making public the horrors of 
the Bastille^ has endued me with an organisation 
expressly calculated to support them. 

If it is to the Marshal dc Duras that so ample a 
satisfaction has been thought due, one should 
hardly be able to forbear repeating what was said 
on this occasion by one of the greatest Monarchs 
in Europe : ** This Monsieur de Duras then must 
** de a very great Personage /" 

Examples on this subject would amount to 
nothing ; in a matter where all is caprice and 
despotism, authorities and comparisons are very 
useless. I cannot however help citing one. 

Among the numberless Imbastillements^ which 
have been designed as a satisfaction to powerful 
Personages, may be reckoned that of Za Beaumclle, 
This writer, more than indiscreet, had dared to 
insert, in his Memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, 
the following phrase : ** The Court of Vienna^ 
** long cue used of keeping in pay, people ready to 
*• administer poison, . . . ." The offence was cer- 
tainly heinous, as well as public : the punishment 
might therefore justly be severe, and reparation 
exemplary. 

However, Five months in the Bastille appeared 



46 MFrnVKS OF 

sufTicicnt. La BfaumelU found an cfTcctu.il pn>- 
tcclion in the generosity of the very Court which 
he had insulted : it was at the solicitation of that 
Court that he was enlarged — and without being 
exiled. 

However mighty the Marshal de Duras as a 
man of arms ; however accomplished the Marshal 
df Duras as a man of letters ; however refined 
the Marshal de Duras as a man of wit ; however 
great the Marshal de Duras as an Academician ; 
notwithstanding all these titles, it is not probable 
that he has apix.*ared to the French Ministry, 
Himself, all alone, a personage more important 
than the House of Austria all together. However 
violent my six unknown lines to the Marshal de 
Duras may be supposed, it cannot be imagined 
they were comparable to the public calumniation, 
equally atrocious as false, in the romance just 
mentioned. 

If then the Marshal de Duras has condescended 
to serve as Sponsor to the Lettre-de-cachet against 
me in the time of its infancy, it is clear that I am 
not to impute to him the guilt of its protracted 
existence : he could not have asked, nor would 
they have offered him, so tedious an atonement 
(21). If it has not been l)elieved that this atone- 
ment was demanded by a terrestrial divinity some- 
what more respectable, it is not the fault of that 
ind'scretion, or rather that malignity, which was 
every where busied in seeking matter of censure 
against me, and of exculpation in favour of the 
French Ministry. That malignity has not been 



THR BASTILLE. 47 

contented with calling in question the name of 
a single sovereign on my account. After having 
given out my pretended connection with one, as 
the motive of the iniquity of the 27th of Sep- 
tember 1780, they have endeavoured to make 
another a direct accomplice in it. It has been 
circulated abroad, that the Lettre-de-ctuhet had 
been granted at the instance of his Prussian 
Majesty. The rumour was spread and still sub- 
sists, that that Monarch, piqued at the Epistle 
to M. (TAlemberty* and at the particulars which 
I thought proper to publish of the famous affair of 
the MiUer^\ and further stimulated by the en- 
treaties of the little Platos of Paris^ had been 
earnest, at Versailles^ in soliciting my imprison- 
ment ; that the French Ministry could not refuse 
this mark of condescension to a Philosopher of 
such importance ; and that the gates of my prison 
could not possibly be opened without the consent 
of him by whose order they had been shut. 

But is it probable, that a Legislator so equitable, 
so beneficent in his own dominions, would have 
sunk so low as to solicit an act of injustice and 
oppression, on his behalf in the dominions of 
another ? Is it probable, that having lately done 
the Author of the Annales the honour of adopting 
his very expressions in one of his laws, J he would 
have indulged himself in a caprice of this kind 



• See Annales PoiittgueSy &c. Vol. ix. p. 79. 

t Ibid. p. 4, &C. 

X See the Annales, Vol. vii. p. 434. 



48 XfF.MOIlfS OF 

of^inst that sAinc writer, who had never offendetl 
him ? Is it prolxihle, l)esides, that VersailUs 
would have thought she owed so cruel an homage 
to Poiziiani ; that they would have dareil to propose 
to the Kitig of France to become an instrument of 
vengeance to the King of Fmssia? With regard 
to such public olTences as tend to blast the honour 
of a Crown, like that of La BeaumelUy of whom 
I have just now spoken. Princes may undoubtedly 
render each other the service of repressing them, 
although not {)ersona]ly interested : but in all other 
respects they carry their jealousy of power so high, 
as to protect, and that sometimes to the prejudice 
of public order, even persons who arc criminal. 
How is it possible then to suspect them of acting 
in concert to proscrilie one who was innocent ? 

In short, what completes the justification of his 
Pn4ssian Majesty, and clearly proves that I have 
not been the Callisthents of this Alexander of the 
Norths is the date of the Letter -de'Cachet in question. 
The 1 6th of April, 1780, is considerably prior to 
the pretended wrongs with which they would have 
connected it. It is evident then, that that Prince 
has not tarnished his philosophical career, in 
persecuting with such animosity, a writer who 
has not indeed courted his favour, but from whom 
he certainly could not with-hold his esteem. 

The particulars of the treatment I underwent, 
and the very duration of my imprisonment, are so 
many additional proofs that he took no part in the 
affair. If he had been the real author of it, would 
not the loss of my liberty have appeared to him an 



THE BASTILLE. 49 

ample satisfaction? Would he have required of 
the Ministers of Versailles those refinements of 
revenge of which I am presently to treat? or 
could they have mistaken him so far, so grossly 
insulted him, as to mean by such measures to 
conciliate his good-will? Far from wishing to 
protract my distress would not his generosity have 
urged him to imitate the example of the Court of 
Vienna towards Lxt Beaumelle t Having infinitely 
less cause of complaint, would he have given way 
to a greater degree of implacability ? Would he 
have prescribed for a Frenchman, at the Bastille, 
those severities which one of his own subjects, 
really criminal, would not have had to fear at 
SjktndawJ 

It is very astonishing that the names of two 
Princes so illustrious should have been thus 
blended with the misfortunes of a private indi- 
vidual ; of him, who, on account of his personal 
simplicity, his dislike to all sorts of parade, his 
abhorrence of every kind of intrigue, his indifference 
to fortune and every ambitious pursuit, ought 
perhaps, of all men who cultivate literature, to 
have been the least exposed to the dangers attend- 
ing the honour of being known to Soverei^s : but 
it is at least equally evident, that neither of those 
whom I have here mentioned could possibly have 
contributed to what I have undergone. My im- 
prisonment has no more owed its origin, or its 
duration, to the pretended requisitions sent from 
Berlin, than to the pretended communications 
dispatched to Vienna^ 

4 



#rf.j# t i:} 



Ht'iai tim tat ir<?i tie iii:n?«K lue rrtiitrcs ctf 
tttft iufca» "^ua utiKst twv nx liscL ca»- 
awMKi ntm ur i i :ie mi** mark, it contiitesae 

«.t:t V lu^ u'* •u<". 114.^:1. H! w«f: lerr limiiiurea. 

i» vm .iur.<i:«.a.— -1 mi. hk M. At Zmr-sL. ;nj 
vOHL * I uen — feu "^t^ii SR nkiac tine 
'^ veil iEssi muuinuuuia^ dL irvin^ : liie 
** «rmui I'Tscnu.v itt noiffiirf ix vsa^ £ I'EiT were 

airt wicri^ sumac ibc j" :j>c c%*. nciine 
mm 3iE3i^ rvtemrt «»«>«.. luii vim: uie 
Fvut^ lunistfu: ii:«* ix n* T*aat. id tiie 

Si:iLL I: vxs^ 'tirT^ x fcia^e 

afpiastf BC Buerc-Ij 3lc :be tra^i^^ilLlj ot my 
of;«rtoon 1 Accuctiis^ :: :^ieir pc'iiiical ritnjl I 
ought to LaT« >*gr: i<caiaed so kx^ as I vu to 
(jc drtmJcd ; *Jii: tSw rll zif acol sLocjd haTe been 
licriOseU X cy orgacs -ierar^cd, or at least my 
feeble uleni* dcsiroyec ly the frigkiiry cf age. 
aivl the Ci/r.v^!>k>iis oi iic$|^r. 

Wlut an uaacouantable destiny ! When the 



THE BASTILLE. 51 

point in debate was, to rob me of my civil 
establishment, in complaisance to a band of 
enrobed assassins, an Advocate-general, their ac- 
complice, devoid of all shame, said in open court, 
in full audience, that I could not possibly be left 
io possession of it, because of the troubles / should 
not /ail ONE DAY* to excite, in — I know not what 
order of men : and here, where tay person was to 
be disposed of, it was coldly consigned to endless 
slavery, on account of the resentment which / 
should not fail one day to entertain ! 

Thus, ever peaceable in reality, and formidable 
in idea; always blameless at the present, and 
criminal in the future ; it is for the hereafter that I 
have been punished. My enemies have never 
been able to excuse their iniquities but by presages 
3ret more iniquitous. They have always assigned, 
as a motive for their cruelties of to-day, my 
infallible resentment of to-morrow ! They have 
never vouchsafed to make the trial whether it was 
not their presages, dictated by a stupid degree of 
timidity, or a cunning kind of hatred, that were 
void of foundation. 

Here, a very fair opportunity, doubtless, pre- 
sented itself. The uncorrupt and feeling heart of 
the King was moved at the remembrance of my 
distress. Whilst intrigue was bustling to dazzle 
his integrity, and calumny loquacious to mislead 
it ; it was watchful, it was eloquent in my favour : 
he was sensible that the punishment of those faults, 



* See Appeia la Postinti, page 35. 



^ AtEMOIKS OF 

whatever ihcy mi^ht l>e, of which he at that time 
liclievcd mc guilty, ought not to be eternal. A 
secret pre)H>!>ses.sion, in favour of my innocence, 
had |)erhai«, even before this, rendere<l the 
virulence of his Counsellors suspicious : and, in 
tpite of their efforts, he pronounced the all- 
powerful Surge &* ambula^ which put an end to 
my misfortunes. 

Was not this the moment, if reason at least, for 
want of justice, if an enlightened policy had had 
any effect on the mind of the Ministers, to try 
what indulgence might have had upon mine; upon 
that untameable spirit, whose extravagant sallies 
they pretended to have been obliged to check by 
io exemplary a punishment ? I have unceasingly 
repeated, in the thousand and one menK>rials 
which I breathed in »ighs from the depths of the 
BastilUy that I knew my Country only by her 
rigours ; and that I adored her. What would 
have been my idolatry, at that juncture when, re- 
nouncing every unjust prejudice, every cruel 
caprice, her sons should have met me with open 
arms ; when to those sentiments, which her 
severities had not changed, I could have added 
that of gratitude for the earnest of one single act 
of kindness ; * when, reinstated in the common 
privileges of the family, I might have said to 
myself: I have hitherto suffered ixora vexa- 

• These words require an explanation that I cannot 
place amongst the Notes : it concerns me so nearly, that I 
would not have it go unnoticed. 

Amongst the innumerable absurdities and falsehoods fA 



THE BASTILLE, 53 

tious prejudices; let us endeavour to destroy 
them. I have been accused of obstinacy, and too 
much vehemence of temper ; let us carry meekness 

which my misfortunes, as usual, has rendered me the 
object, one has gone abroad, which I cannot pass by with 
neglect : it has been said, it has been written, it has be^ 
printed, that the claims of the French Ministry upon me 
were so much the stronger, as I had received from them a 
pension of two thousand crowns. 

1 am obliged to declare, that there never was a more 
impudent falsehood. It is unaccountable that it should 
have been hazarded, at any time posterior to the 27 th of 
September, 1780, after what I had said in the preceding 
August, N°. LIX. p. 396 in the Annates i 

" There is only one of the Kings of Europe towards 
" whom respect, attachment, and fidelity, on my part, can 
'* be considered as duties ; one alone, from whom I might 
" HAVE accepted benefactions without a blush, and with- 
"ottt a scruple. Now, even of Him, I never asked, I 
" never will ask, any thing but justice." 

It is immaterial here what was the answer made to this 
demand : but it is clear that the man who held this 
language publickly, in a printed work, was not pensioned. 

The only marks of attention which I have received from 
the French Ministry during my life have been three Icttres- 
de-cachet ; one for the Bastille^ and two of Exile ; of 
which the first was my punishment for having as Counsel 
defended M. de Bellegarde^ who was at first solemnly 
condemned as guilty, and three years after, as solemnly 
acknowledged innocent. 

The other affairs which I have treated, either as a 
Civilian, or merely as a Man of Letters, have not all been 
found worthy of such flattering distinctions : but there is 
not one of them, of which the success, so far as it respected 
me, was not embittered by the ingratitude of the Clients 
whom I saved, the prevarications of the Tribunals which 1 
compelled to be just, the stupidity or the corruption of the 
men in place whom I unmasked. It cannot be imputed 
to self-sufficiency, when I declare, that neither the Bar, 
nor the Republic of Letters, have produced a man whose 



54 Af/iAfO//fS OF 

and patience even to the extreme : let us try to 
di.ssi|>ate fear, disarm hatred, and take away 
every pretext of uneasiness. 

Rising from my sepulchre, my first movements 
tended to confirm these dispositions. Like another 
iMzaruSt disencumbered of the grave-clothes which 
fur twenty months had intercepted every motion of 
my tongue, and my heart, it was sensibility, it was 
the love of peace, it vrzAgratiiude that I announced. 
For five whole weeks 1 have not ceased to tender 
to these cowanlly and implacable despots, my 
hands yet bleeding from the chains with which 
they had so long been loaded. I asked of them 
only the favour to try me, and I was not able to 

life hat been interspersed with anecdotes more incredible 
of this kind, from the Defence of the Dttc dAiguiUcn^ 
down to my Reflections on that of M. de Lally. 

1 will dare to go further, even though the charge of 
self-Auflliciency should be brought against me, and the old 
cry of tgotum revived : lliere has not been a writer whose 
xeal was more pure, whose soul more inaccessible to intrigue 
and personal influence, whose talents more exclusively de- 
voted to the protection of juntice, and the manifestation of 
truth : and this is sufficiently evident from the fruits they 
have yielded me. 

Having spoken of the exile occasioned by the defeix:e of 
M. dt BtUeg^arde^ I must render due homage to the 
generosity shewn by the Marshal de Biron on that cocasion. 
He was chief of the Council of War which the Lettrt-dt- 
cachtt seemed to avenge : he was extremely active in 
accelerating its revocation ; and on my return, a very 
polite, a very flattering reception was the balm he poured 
into my wound. 

Of Gallic Knights ei>cn such is the renown. 

But this Is apparently not the character of the Literary 
Knights, nor of the Academic Marshals. 



THE B4STILLE. 55 

obtain it ! they did not dare to believe my words 
were sincere. Unworthy to form a judgement of 
my heart, they imagined their Lettres-de-cachet a 
more powerful check than my delicacy : and while 
the enjoyment of a state of freedom, henceforward 
inviolably secured to me, is hardly a consolation 
for the price it costs me, they are congratulating 
themselves perhaps on the sagacity which enabled 
them to foretell the use / should not fail to make 
of it. 

Away with these unseasonable retrospects and 
regrets ! Having been refused permission to con- 
vince the French Ministry of my resigned dis- 
position, let us make use of the faculty they have 
forced me to assume, to unmask their injustice, 
and divulge their barbarity. The former is already 
sufficiently obvious : let us proceed to the detail of 
the latter ; and, if on the perusal of these Memoirs, 
some readers are tempted to say that no oppression 
has ever been upbraided with equal energy, let us 
force them in like manner to confess that none has 
ever been attended with equal cruelty. 



END OF VOL. I. 



(Collectanea BDamantnral 




MEMOIRS OF THE BASTILLE. 




[COLLECTANEA ADAMANT/EA.-IV.] 



MEMOIRS 

OF 

THE BASTILLE. 

Cratislatelr from ti^e iPrencQ 

OP THX CXLXBRATXD 

Mr LLXGUET, 

who was imprisoned there from 
september 1780 to may 1782. 



^Iritflr hi) 
EDMUND GOLDSMID, F.R.H.S. 



VOL II. 



rKI\ ATLLV I'RIiNTKI). 

EDINBURGH. 
1885. 




This eMlion is limtted to 275 smalt-paf><r copies. 



MEMOIRS 



OF 



THE BASTILLE. 



PART II. 



SECTION III. 

Of the Regimen of the Bastille, 

T SHALL not at present touch on that tender 
question, of which the discussion would be 
more difficult than the solution could be useful ; I 
shall not examine whether State- Prisons be neces- 
sary appendages to a Government ; whether every 
Administration requires these fastnesses, removed 
without the pale, and withdrawn from the inspec- 
tion, of the Laws ; whether this spring, for the 
most part violent, and always dangerous, may be 
considered as an indispensible requisite in 



6 MEMOIRS OF 

machines which for their preservation sometimes 
stand in need of an extraordinary impulse ; 
whether, in fine, what is in France known by the 
strange appellation of a Lettre-de cachet^ be an 
evil peculiar to that kingdom, like the plague in 
Kgypt, the small -pox in Arabia, and those inunda- 
tions of liquid fire in the countries infested by 
burning mountains? This problem is best resolved 
by facts \ and although such solution may not be 
admitted by humane philosophy, it is nevertheless 
adopted by universal policy. 

We are unacquainted with a nation among whom 
this resource, or else some equivalent, has not 
been an engine in the hands of power. In the 
purest era of her liberty, Rome had her 
Dictators. The orders of this supreme magis- 
trate bore an authority not inferior to that of a 
Lettre-de-cachety since he disposed without appeal, 
and without responsibility, not only of the liberty, 
but even of the lives of the citizens. 

In Sparta we may observe how State-policy 
extended still farther the bounds of despotism. 
The Kings themselves, that is to say, the Chiefs 
of the nation, bowed before it. The Epijori had 
power to commit them to prison ; and though 
their warrant varied somewhat from a LeUr^-de* 
cachet^ yet, in its principle, it may be considered 
as essentially the same. 

Nay, in that part of the world where the Govern- 



THE BASTILLE. 7 

ment is most closely watched and restrained, 
where the privities of individuals are most effect- 
ually secured from the encroachments of arbitrary 
power; in London itself, we behold a Tower 
destined for the reception of State-Criminals. 
The Parliament, that guardian of private, no less 
than of public freedom, not only sees without 
terror, a citadel that seems to threaten destruction 
to both, but even goes so far sometimes as to use it ; 
and in so doing they are not thought to violate, 
nor yet to hazard the liberty of the People. 
(22.) 

But a similar institution may appear to be far 
more excusable in France ; where, the characters 
of men being more impetuous, the pretensions of 
different powers continually jarring with each 
other less circumscribed, and the regal authority 
neither limited nor ascertained, we may easily 
conceive, that on some occasions, it will be 
necessary to have a check, or kind of scare-crow 
to defend the prerogative of the Crown, if not of 
the Kingdom. But I once more observe, that 
this is a point which I do not pretend to examine : 
I am not to consider the legality of the institution, 
but the r^men, of the Bastille ; I mean the 
exercise of its authority. Now its r^men is 
dreadful I it resembles nothing practised hereto- 
fore, or at this moment practised, in the known 
world. (23.) 



8 MEMOIRS OF 

If in one of those relations, which t)ie ebullitions 
of imaginary travellers have multiplied of late 
years, we should read, that in an island of the 
southern hemisphere, which nature seems to have 
concealed from the rest of the globe, there exists 
a people, gay, mild, and frivolous, not only in 
their manners, but also in their most essential 
({ualities, with a Government far from sanguinary; 
where the most serious affairs ever assume an air 
of pleasantry ; and in whose capital notwithstand- 
ing, is kept with infinite care, an abyss, into 
which every citizen, without exception, is each 
moment liable to be hurled, and into which some 
are actually precipitated every day, in consequence 
of orders inevitable, as they are inexplicable ; for 
which it is often impossible to divine the motive 
or the pretext : 

That the unfortunate wretch thus vanished, 
finds himself detached from all the rest of man- 
kind ; farther removed from his relations, from 
his friends, and, what is worse than all, from 
justice, than if he had been transferred into another 
planet ; that his cries and supplications are stifled 
in their passage, or at least, that only one channdi 
is allowed for their issue ; and that precisely the 
one most interested in suppressing them ; a motive 
that must be prevalent, in proportion as the 
oppression is palpable and enormous : 

That he is abandoned, at least for a consider- 



THE BASTILLE. 9 

able length of lime, without books, without paper, 

to the torturing suspence of being entirely ignorant 

of what passes in the world, of the fate of his 

family, his fortune, his honour ; of what he has 

been, and of what he is to be accused ; torments 

which a perpetual solitude, undiverted by any 

kind of avocation, renders more intolerable : 

That he has no other security for his life but the 

tenderness of his keepers, who notwithstanding 

the mark of honour attached to their habit, being 

capable of such meanness as to become for hire 

the base satellites of arbitrary power, would 

doubtless feel but little repugnance in undertaking 

an office still more base and barbarous, if it was 

required of them on the same terms : that he has 

therefore grounds to be apprehensive of poison in 

every dish that is served up to him : that every 

time his door is opened, the melancholy clang of 

the bolts and bars with which it is loaded, may 

seem to announce his death-warrant, or to notify 

the arrival of the mutes destined to perform the 

fatal office; whilst he cannot derive the least 

motive to tranquility either from the consciousness 

of his innocence, or from the equity of the 

Sovereign; since the first attack on the former, 

may be followed by a second j since they have the 

same power over his life, as they exercise over his 

liberty ; since the same persons, who a thousand 

times a day lend their hands to his execution in a 





i 



lo MEMOIRH Ot 

iiioial !»cn!»c, by virtue of a iMirt-iie-CakfKt^ 
couKl not be sup{)osed to refuse their assistance 
tu accomplish the same purpose in a literal sense, 
when once commissioned by the same authority; 
and lastly, since in a place where all is mystery 
and sorrow, there is no enormity so atrocious, 
but may with as much ease be concealed as com- 
mitted : 

That, if he preserver his health, it is but an 
additional grievance, sensibility being then most 
exquisite, and privation more painful ; that if it 
gives way, as is generally the case, to the miseries 
of his situation, he is allowed neither relief nor 
comfort ; but must remain in that helpless and 
wretched condition ; perpetually agonised by re- 
flecting on the impossibility of an escape, on the 
misfortunes that may happen to his family, the 
oblivion to which his name is in danger of being 
consigned ; by considering, that his ashes will be 
deprived of the last sad tribute of tenderness and 
affect ion ; that his end will perhaps be unknown ; 
and that his mistaken wife and children may be 
offering up vows and making efforts for his deliver- 
ance, long after the sepulchre, in which he was 
buried alive will contain no remains of him but 
his bones ! 

Should we find such a picture in the voyages of 
Cook, or Anson, what sort of impressioo would it 
make upon our minds ? Might we not take the 



THE BASTILLE. ii 

author for an impK>stor ; or in felicitating our- 
selves on being natives of a country exempt from 
such a wretched servitude, should we not conceive 
a degree of contempt, mingled with horror, for a 
Government so barbarous, and a People so 
debased? 

But alas ! it is the picture of no other than the 
Bastille, and that far from overcharged ! How 
weakly does it represent those tortures and 
lengthened convulsions of the mind; those 
perpetual agonies that eternise the pains of death, 
without affording its repose ; in short, all the 
torments which the jailers of the Bastille can 
inflict, and which no stretch of human art can 
exhibit ! 

The first article of their code is the impene- 
trable mystery with which all their operations are 
inveloped ; a mystery that goes so far, as not only 
to leave people in doubt with regard to the place 
of residence, but even with regard to the life, of 
the unfortunate person who has slipped into their 
hands; a mystery that is not confined to the 
interdiction of all communication, whence he 
might derive either comfort or amusement, but is 
carried to such extent, as to prevent it from 
being known with certainty where he is, or even 
whether he is still in existence. 

A prisoner, whom an officer of the Bastille 
sees every day, will, when spoken of in the world. 



la MEMOIRS OF 

ticdeQicvl mith con'^ummnlccffrunliT)' ever to have 
been seen or known hy him. When some of mv 
faitbfal friends sollicitctl of the Minister who pre- 
tifics over these tlun|»et>ns, permission to visit me, 
he asked, a> it were, with astoni>hment, how they 
could sup|K>Ne me to l)e in the Uasiillc? The 
<l<wemor has often sworn to several of them, on 
his word and honour as a Cientleman, that I was 
DO longer confined there, and that I had not been 
deUineti there alx^ve eight days; for the public 
no«oriety of my apprehension, ami the care they 
had taken to have it executed by broad day-light 
and in the oj>en street, would not permit him to 
maintain, as without doubt he otherwise would 
have done, that I had never entered the walls of 
the prison. 

Thus a porter will often declare a falsehood at 
his master's gate, in obedience to his orders : but 
this is merely to prevent importunate visits ; his 
falsehoods have an end, either of utility or con- 
venience ; he neither maintains ihem with an 
affected air of sincerity, nor with oaths : and, 
notwithstanding, his employ is thought a vile one. 
What then must be that of a Minister, of a 
(iovernor of the Bastille, who deceives but to 
torment, and whose falsehocKls are productive of 
nothing but affliction ? 

I should be glad to be informed, what can be 
the design of all this afl'ectation of mystery, in 



THE BASTILLE. 15 

leaving the public at lar^^e, friends, relations 
doubtful of the very being of a man whom they 
have ravished from them ? it cannot be to facili- 
tate the means of convicting him, and to render 
his punishment the more certain : for, first, this 
clandestine custody can be of no avail to those 
who are employed against him elsewhere, either 
to carry on the prosecution, or to execute the 
sentence pronounced upon him : secondly, my 
example proves, that the Bastille often contains 
prisoners whom they not only never intend to 
prosecute, tmt whom they have not wherewithal 
to arraign ; and it is precisely these, whom they 
are most assiduous to cover with a veil of dark- 
ness. I repeat it once more, what can the 
design be ? 

The express institution of this prison being to 
distract the mind, and to render life itself 
miserable, (as one of my tormentors ingenuously 
acknowledged ; a man, who, though honoured 
with the order of St. Louis, had not virtue enough 
to shudder at the idea of so horrid a function;) 
I conceive that this dreary solitude, this absolute 
ignorance in which they keep a prisoner with 
respect to what has been done, is actually doing, 
or is about to be done, either for or against him, 
are means admirably adapted to the end proposed. 
Nothing can be contrived or imagined more effectual 
to lead a man through each gradation of despair ; 



I 



14 MEMOIRS OF 

particularly, if he has the misfortune to be 
endowed with one of those lofty and active souls, 
which are apt to be shocked with a virtuous in- 
dignation at injustice, to which employment is 
a want, and suspence a punishment. But why 
make partakers of his torments, friends and rela- 
tions, whom they pretend not to associate in his 
afflictions ? 

When a process is established, there is at least 
this alleviation ; that the nature and extent of the 
accusation is known, the progress of the proceed- 
ings regular and open ; the victim is not lost to 
view, till his sacrifice, or his triumph. Disquiet 
has its bounds, and grief its consolation. 

But here, whilst the wretch removed from every 
eye accuses his family and friends of neglecting him, 
they are trembling lest their remembrance of him 
should be imputed to them as a crime: his 
captivity depending on caprice, and his chains 
being liable to be knocked off every moment, or 
to be perpetuated without end, each day is to 
those who long to see him, as it is to the unfortu- 
nate man himself, a complete period, in which 
they exhaust all the anguish of suspence, all the 
horrors of privation : in the morning their tears 
flow on the recollection of his sufferings, and in 
the evening on the anticipation of what he is yet 
to suffer ; while it is impossible for them to con- 
ceive when they will terminate ; or, if the imagina- 



THE BASTILLE. i 5 

tion should attempt to fix their bounds, it is but a 
preparation of renovated misery. 

The Tyrant, who first founded this prison, had 
his view in so horrid an institution ; which was 
to get rid, with all possible privacy, of such per- 
sons as the executioners themselves would refuse 
to assassinate. When he had once prescribed an 
innocent person, for the innocent only are pro- 
scribed, whilst the guilty are judged, he wished 
to have the epoch of his death unknown, that he 
might fix it precisely at the very moment most 
agreeable to his interest or his vengeance. 

But Lewis XVI. is not Lewis XL the one is as 
humane, as the other was barbarous: the one 
respects as much justice and the laws, recommends 
and enjoins as urgently the observation of them, 
as the other took delight in having them trampled 
on, and giving himself the example of the viola- 
tion. Whence then does it arrive, that the 
humanity of Lewis XVL connives at the con- 
tinuance of an institution invented by the tyranny 
of Lewis XI ? How comes it, that under a Prince 
to whom law is sacred, and the blood of mankind 
precious, his subjects are liable to the same 
catastrophe, as they were under a Sovereign, to 
whom an execution was a favourite amusement, 
who called the executioner his Cousin^ and never 
went abroad but under the escort of a Satellite, 
another of his cousins, but more savage and 



1 6 MEMOIRS OF 

more sanguinary than all the executioners to- 
gether ? 

Further, if it was the enormity of the crime, or 
the rank of the delinquent, that should require 
this strange and perilous concealment ; if this 
funeral veil was thrown only over those whom the 
magnitude of their offences had devoted to 
immediate punishment, or over those who, given 
to intrigue and cabal, might ht formidable from 
their birth, their riches or their connexions ; there 
would be some excuse, or at least some pretext 
for it. 

But the Bastille, like death, brings to an equality 
all whom it swallows up : the sacrilegious villain, 
who has plotted the destruction of bis Country ; 
the undaunted Patriot, guilty of no other crime 
but that of maintaining her rights with too much 
ardour ; the wretch, who has betrayed for gold 
the secrets of the cabinet, and he who has dared 
to speak truths to Ministers, useful to the State, 
but repugnant to their interest : as well he who is 
confined lest he should become a dishonour to his 
family, as he who is only obnoxious on account of 
his talents, are all overwhelmed alike in uniform 
darkness. 

And, let it be considered well ; this darkness is 
double: it prevents them from seeing, no less 
than from being seen : it not only deprives the 
prisoner of the knowledge of everything that 



/ 



THE BASTILLE, 17 

personally interests him, of the power of inspecting 
the state of his private af&irs of preventing either 
by definitive or provisional arrangements his own 
ruin, and sometimes that of his correspondents ; 
and, above all, that of informing his friends, and 
confuting his enemies ; in short, of every kind of 
useful occupation : but it also covers from his 
sight the view of public af&irs, and every thing 
else that might have a tendency to amuse or divert 
his solitude. Become an outcast from society he 
is not permited even to know what is going 
forward in the world. There may perhaps be in 
these dungeons, a man, who is daily solliciting 
with his prayers Lewis XV. and the Duke cU la 
Villilre ; he thinks them still the living forgers of 
his chains : he is incessantly on his knees before 
the images of those two persons, of whom nothing 
remains at present but the memory; and the 
officers of the prison, witnesses of his error, are so 
stupidly reserved, or so cruelly scrupulous, as not 
to acquaint him with it. 

From this total ignorance of what is, and what 
is not, there results an infinity of effects calamit- 
ous to the deceived and unfortunate prisoner. 
For example, if he has been sacrificed to the 
personal vengeance of a man in power, he has not 
the consolation of beholding the fall of a colossus, 
whose elevation has been fatal to him. Neither 
can he take the advantage of it, since it is a 

B 



it MEMOIRS OF 

circumstance which he is entirely uninformed of : 
aad, if he has nut very zealous friends ; if his 
fitmiiy is timid or obscure, indifferent or disaffected 
to him ; the oppression still subsists, although the 
oppreasor is no more. The successor turns his 
thoughts rather to the exertion of the same 
authority, than to remove the evils it has occa- 
aiooed. The prisoner continues immured in the 
Bastille, not because it is intended that he should 
remain there ; but because he is there, because he 
is forgotten ; because interest is not made at the 
proper offices ; and because nothing equals the 
difficulty of getting out of that murderous pit, 
except the facility of falling into it. 

I can produce an example, besides my own, ami 
that without calling any one into question. 
Whilst I was in the Bastille there was a native of 
Geneva, by name Pellhseri^ confined there. His 
sole crime was, having made some remarks on 
Mr. Necker's operations in the finance depart- 
ment. When I was by a very extraordinary 
accident informed of it, he had already been three 
years in the prison. Probably he is there still ; 
and- knows neither of the ruin of his Country, nor 
that of the Minister, whom he justly accuses of 
his own. There too perhaps he will continue, 
till chance, or possibly the mention I now make 
of him, may recall his memory to the minds of 
thf»se moveable masters, who can over-rule the 



THE Bj^STILLE. 19 

immobility of the Bastille : perhaps tbey will at 
length be sensible how shocking it is to humanity 
and justice, that the name of the State thould 
give a sanction to perpetuate the personal 
vengeance of a temporary Minister; that a 
stranger, an honest man, should be punished, for 
having been so enlightened, as to foresee what the 
Government should before have been well apprised 
of. For after all, what remains of the operations 
of Mr. Necker? If Mr. Pelisseri has been 
culpable in censuring them, what must those be 
who have destroyed them? (24) 

Can one reflect without shuddering, that the 
horrors I am now tracing have been the reward 
of an indiscretion, which a few months later would 
have been an action, not only of prudence, but of 
necessity ? The panegyrist of Mr. Necker would, 
doubtless, in the present state of affairs, soon be 
made afelluw -captive with his accuser : thus, whilst 
a despotism unrestrained by shame, multiplies at its 
discretion the victims of these dangerous and 
inconclusive speculations, their cries and suppli- 
cations die away in the inaccessible avenues of 
the prison. 

Again, let it be observed, that, as nothing can 
get admission, so nothing can find its way out of 
it : the very attempts which a prisoner may 
hazard, to procure, by means of his friends or 
patrons, either a pardon or a trial are intercepte<l 



ao MEMOIRS OF 

aad imothcred : should he be so indiscreet as to 
hint the quarter from which he may look for 
tttccottr, the blood-hounds of the Police hasten to 
block up the passage, and to obstruct the efforts 
that be undertaken in his favour. They never 
leave it in his power to solicit those who are in a 
capacity to make interest for him, until he has 
exhausted, to the last drop, the bitter draught 
which des)x>tism and hatred have prepared for 
him. 

His letters, when be is allowed the means of 
writing, pass open to the Police^ or are there 
broke open. The doleful lamentations oi the 
captives afford no small amusement to the persons 
appointed to inspect them : they divert themselves 
for a short time with the various notes of the 
different birds they have in their cage, and then 
tie up carefully in a bundle together the several 
epistolary productions of the day; not to be 
applied to any use, but either to deposit them in 
some hidden magazine, or to burn them : and 
neither the persons who wrote them, nor those to 
whom they are addressed, ever see them or hear 
of them aiterwards. 

In the commencement of my captivity I resolved 
on imploring the favour of the Princes of the 
Blood Royal. Having been beforehand informed, 
that Afmsiiur and the Count iT Artois honoured 
me with their esteem, I flattered myself that they 



THE BASTILLE. ii 

would extend their bounty to me m my mislbr- 
tunes. I consequently wrote to them, and sealed 
up the letters. Some time after, I was inlbnned 
by the Lieutenant of the Poiicey that he had read 
my letters, but had not delivered them ; that he 
had not authority to do it. On whidi I observed, 
that, as he knew the substance, he m^t make 
those noble Princes, from whom they were with- 
held, acquainted with it. To this he replied, that 
he had not access to men of their high rank. So 
a person not deemed worthy of approaching these 
great men, was allowed the liberty of <^penii^ 
their letters, of suppressing them, of renderii^ 
their good intentions and those of the King futile ; 
in fine, of raising around me ramparts more 
insurmountable than all the magic castles, with 
which imagination has filled the regions of 
romance! 

Let us now enter info the inside of these 
ramparts : let us now examine how those three- 
headed monsters, who guard them, act in the 
accomplishment of their abominable office, to 
render life an insupportable burthen. 

The prelude to their operations, when a fresh 
victim is brought to them, is the Search, Their 
mode of taking possession of a prisoner's person, 
and their manner of shewing him the infernal 
property in which he will be held, is first to strip 
him of all his own. He is no less astonished, than 



22 MEMOIRS OF 

alarmed, to find himself delivered up to the search- 
ing and groping of four men, whose appearance is 
enough to l)e1ye their functions, and yet does but 
add to their infamy ; of four men decorated with 
a uniform, which must give one cause to expect 
decency of conduct, with insignia, I repeat once 
more, which one would suppose to denote an 
koMcurabU service. 

They take away his money, least it should 
afford the means of corruption amongst them ; his 
jewels, on the very same consideration ; his 
papers, lest they should furnish him with a 
resource against the weariness and vexation to 
which he is doomed ; his knives, scissors, &c. 
least he should cut his own throat, say they, or 
assassinate his jailors : for they explain to him 
coolly the motives for all their depredations. 
After this ceremony, which is long, and often 
interrupted by pleasantries and remarks on every 
article in the inventory, they drag him to the cell 
destined for his reception. 

These cells are all contained in Towers, of 
which the walls are at least twelve, and at the 
bottom thirty or forty feet thick. Each has a 
vent-hole made in the wall ; but crossed by three 
grates of iron, one within, another in the middle, 
and a third on the outside. The bars cross each 
other, and are an inch in thickness ; and by a 
refinement of invention in the persons who con- 



trived tbem, tht adbd put a£ 
medics answos aacdj to tlbe 
so that a passi^isleft to Ae 
two iDchcsy tboBg^ tlbe iamvals 
incbes squaie. 

Fonnerlj cadi of these czrcs had 
openings, small indeed, and 
same gnuings. Bat this ■ddpfidsj 
soon foond to prooiote the drcalatiaa of 
they pierented hamidiiy, mfmtiam, ibc A 
humane Goremor therefcic had them stopped vp; 
and at present there lemains bmt ooe, vhidh €m 
very fine days jost admits li^ enoa^ into Ae 
cell to make " darkness Tisible." 

So in winter these dungeons are periect ice- 
houses, because they are lofty enough ibr tbeftost 
to penetrate ; in aimmcT they are motst, saiocat- 
ing stoves, to the walls being too thick ibr the 
heat to dry them. 

Several of the cells, and mine was of the 
number, are situated upon the ditch into which 
the common sewer of the I^m€ St. AmUime empties 
itself; so that whenever it is deared out, or in 
summer after a Sew days continuance of the hot 
weather, or after an inundation, which is frequent 
enough both spring and autumn in ditches sunk 
l)elow the level of the river, there eidiales a most 
iniectioos, pestOential vapour: and when it has 
once entered those pidgeon-holes they caH rooms. 



14 MEMOIRS OF 

it it a considerable sime I)efore they are cleare<l 
of it. 

Such is the atmosphere a prisoner breathes: 
there in order to prevent a total suffocation, is 
he obliged to pass his days, and often his nights, 
stuck up against the interior grate, which keeps 
him from spproaching, as described above, too 
close to the hole cut in the form of a window ; the 
only orifice through which he can draw his scanty 
portion of air and of light. His efforts to suck a 
little fresh through this narrow tube serve often 
but tu encrease around him the fetid odour, with 
which he is on the point of being suffocated. 

But iwoe to the unfortunate wretch, who in 
winter cannot procure money to pay for the firing, 
which they distribute in the JTittg's name! 
Formerly a proper quantity was supplied for 
the consumption of each prisoner, without equiv- 
alent, and without measure. They were not used 
to cavil with men in every other respect deprived 
of all, and subjected to so cruel a privation of 
exercise, on the quantity of fire requisite to rarefy 
their blood coaguelated by inaction, and to volatise 
the vapours condensed upon their walls. It was 
the will of the Sovereign, that they should enjoy 
the benefit of this solace, or this refreshment, 
unrestrained as to the expence. 

The intention, without doubt, is still the same s 
yet is the custom altered. The present Governor 



THE BASTILLE. 

has Imiited tke ptopovtioD fcr eadi pdsoner to 
billeCs of wood, ^»7B>f #r jsm/L It is veil 
that in Fuis the logs fcr chamber mx aie bat 
half the maiket sise, being sawed throa^ the 
middle : thej aie no mote than ei ghte e n inches in 
lei^;th. The omnimi ral |iime y i« is caielal to 
pick out in the timber-merdiantsr yards the toj 
smallest he can find, and, what is as inciedible as 
it is tine, the Teiy wnst. He dmses in pccfer- 
ence those at the bottom of the piles, whicji aie 
exhausted by time and moistme of all their salts, 
and for that reason thrown aside to be sold at an 
inferior price to the brewers, bakeis, and snch 
other trades as require a fire rather clear than 
substantial. Six of those log;s, or rather stido, 
make the allowance of lour and twenty hours lor 
an inhabitant of the Bastille. 

It may be asked, what they do when this 
allowance is exhausted ? They do as the honour- 
able Governor advises them ; they put up with 
thdr snffisrii^;s. (25) 

The articles of fiimiture are worthy of the light 
by which they are exhilnted, and the apartments 
they serve to decorate. I must first observe, that 
the Governor contracts with the Ministry to supply 
them ; and this is one of the trifling perquisites 
attadied to his immense revenue, which I shall 
take notice of presently. He may frame excuses 
forliimself, with regard to the inconveniences of 



26 MEMOlRa OF 

the prison, because he cannot change the situation 
of places ; he may palliate the niggardly distribu- 
tion ot wood, under the pretext of saving the 
King's money. But on the head of furniture, 
which is entirely his own affair, and for which he 
if paid, he can have neither excuse nor palliation : 
hit parsimony in this particular is at the same 
time both cruel and dishonest. 

Two mattrasses half eaten by the worms, a 
matted elbow chair, the bottom uf which was 
kept together by pack-thread, a tottering table, a 
water pitcher, two pots of Dutch ware, one of 
which served to drink out of, and two flag-stones 
to support the fire, composed the inventory of 
mine. I was indebted only to the commiseration 
of the turnkey, after several months confinement, 
for a pair of tongs and a fire-shovel. I could not 
possibly procure dog-irons ; and whether it may 
be considered as the effect of policy, or want of 
feeling, what the Governor does not think proper 
to furnish, he will not suffer the prisoner to 
provide at his own expence. It was eight months 
ere I could gain permission to purchase a tea-pot ; 
twelve before I could procure a chair tolerably 
steady and convenient ; and fifteen ere I was 
allowed to replace, by a vessel of common ware,- 
the clumsy and disgusting pewter machine they, 
had assigned me. 

The sole article I was allowed to furekasi in 



THE BASTILLE, z7 



the beginning of my imprisonnient, was a 
blanket ; and the manner by whicii I 
this privilege was as follows. 

It is well known that in the mocuh of September 
the moths which prey upon woollen stiifi aie 
transformed into butterflies. On the opening of 
the cave into which I was introdaced, there ataat 
from the bed, I will not say a number, or a dood, 
but a large thidc cohnnn, of these insects, which 
instantly overspread the whole chamber. The 
sight caused me to start back with horror ; wbcn 
I was consoled by one of my condacton w^ the 
assurance, fAa/ before I had lain there two nigiis^ 
there would not be one left. 

In the evening the Lieutenant of the Police 
came according to custom, to bid me welcome ; 
when I expressed such a violent dislike to a flock- 
bed so full of incumbents, that they were gracioiisiy 
pleased to permit me to put on a new covering, 
and to have the mattrass beaten, all at wy own 
expence. As feather-beds are entirely prohibited 
in the fiastille, doubtless because they are con- 
sidered as too great a luxury for persons to whom 
the Ministry wish to give a lesson of mortiflcation, 
I was very desirous that every three months my 
miserable mattrass should be suffered to undergo 
the same kind of renovation. Yet the proprietary 
Governor opposed it with all his might notwith- 
standing it would have cost him nothing ; " for," 



St MEMOIRS OF 



he, " we must not use them to too much 
indulgence." 

Madam de Stool infonns us, that she got her 
room lined with tapestry. Whether she owed 
this condescension to her quality as the favourite 
of a great I*rincess, or to the manners of the age, 
which retained even in the Bastille some tincture 
of humanity, as may be inferred from other 
circumstances in her relation, I shall not take 
upon me to determine. Thus much is certain ; 
that all these indulgences are now considered as 
abuses, which were to be retrenched by the stem 
regularity of modem times. My urgent applica- 
tions, to obtain at my own expence either some 
doth to absorb the mobture of the walls, or 
paper, whence I might have derived the same 
benefit, with the further amusement of pasting 
it on myself, were made and repeated to no 
enect« 

In my chamber these walls had a most dismal 
appearance. One of my predecessors, whether 
a painter by profession, or one who cultivated 
the art for his amusement, got leave to daub 
over the apartment, after a manner; and he 
at any rate had the satisfaction not to be so totally 
excluded from every thing to employ his hands, 
or occupy his attention* The chamber is an 
octagon, with four large and four amall aides: 
they are all lined with pictures very loitable to 



'"vish^ 



THE BASTILLE. 19 

the place ; namely, the representation of our 
Saviour's sufferings. 

But whether through choice, or because they 
would allow him but the one colour adapted to 
the subject and the apartment, he had done them 
all in oker ; whence their gloomy uniformity 
may be easliy imagined. After the flight of the 
butterflies, when I cast my eyes on those pannels, 
which the obscurity of the chamber rendered still 
more dismal, and could discern nothing but figures 
of grief, punishment and execution, without dis* 
tinguishing the particular subject ; what we have 
heard of the Oubliettes^ what we know of the 
Sambenitos^ instantly recurred to my imagination : 
and I firmly believed, that those figures were so 
many emblems of the lot which awaited me, and 
that they had put me in this dungeon to prepare 
me for it. I commended myself to the mercy of 
the Almighty. Souls endued with sensibility! 
judge of the horrors of the moment. 

Thus provided as to furniture and lodging, if 
the captives were but allowed the privilege granted 
to the convicts in such prisons as are under the 
direction oi justice alone, that is to say, an inter- 
course with each other, the means of conversing 
and forming connexions, which the necessity of 
other situations may excuse, even between the 
honest man and one of an opposite character, 
hut which in the fiastille might often be founded 



3c ME MOIMS OF 

on reciprocal esteem : tbuugh thc>' would still lie 
PCMiblc oi their di&trest, yet would they become 
Uie more capable of supporting it. There are 
certaia laquor^ mhach when separately taken are 
di^pHtiiig, but mben mixed are rendered more 
Hfroeable to the palate. It is the same with 
■usliartanes. Hut it is precisely this amalgamation 
of i^gbs, that the officers of the Bastille are so 
amidvotts to pre%'ent ; whet a prisoner might 
cuntrix-e tt* diminish of his sorrows, would be so 
mnch retrenched from their enjoyments. They 
■ii{>lit aptly take fiir a device, Caligula's address 
ic the enLTCtttioners whom he employed : Strike sa 
ms U mtaJke kimfttl his dfotk ! 

Viom the m<iment a man is delivered into their 
hamhk he is lot»t, as I obser\*ed before, to the 
whole vktavct^ : be exists only far them ; for they 
•ff no less careful to prevent all corresjx>ndedce 
within amon{: their victims, than they are to 
e^ol»<ie all communication ham without. La 
/Wtf^, anil others, speak of an intercourse which 
thcx htki] with earh other, by means of chimnies, 
A?. 

\|2l«tr! \ci me ohsrrvc, that it might have been 
4V ^'wir ir\ their time : liut at present the tunnels 
o* the «'^imnies arc traversed, like the windows, 
b^ tliv^e ^oti |fmi«6, ooe Above aaodMr ; the 6rst 
a; %>M^ i^ m the <Ma w m o c of thvee feet horn the 
KmHl) ; »i»fi the months of <hc chiwnies ate laiscd 



THE BASTILLE. 31 

several feet above the roof: the prnries, a veiy 
rare accomodatioD, for I believe there are only 
two rooms in the whole prLson provided with 
them, are secured with the same kind of grating : 
many of the rooms are vaulted ; the others are 
covered with a double cieling. 

When they think proper to order a prisoner 
down stairs, whether for an interri^tory, if he be 
so forunate as to obtain one; or to attend the 
Physician, if not so ill as to l)e under the necessity 
of being visited in his cell ; or for the sham 
exercise of a walk, which I shall notice presently; 
or merely through the caprice of the Governor ; 
he finds all silent, desert and obscure. The 
dismal croaking of the turn-key, by whom he is 
guided, serves as a signal for all to disappear, who 
might either see, or be seen by him. The windows 
of that part of the building where the principal 
officers huld their latent residence, of the kitchens, 
and of those parts where strangers are admitted, 
shield themselves instantly with curtains, lattices 
and blinds ; and they have the cruelty not to 
proceed to this operation till he is in a situation 
to perceive it. Everything is thus calculated to 
remind him, that within a few paces of him there 
are men ; such perhaps as it would be the highest 
gratification for him to see, since th are so 
extremely anxious to conceal them : so that the 
torture is increasing in proportion to his curiosity ; 



23 MEMOIRS OF 

his agonies are multiplied in proportion to his 
attachments. 

For a long time I imagined, that I had for a 
fellow-prisoner, a Person whose safety alone would 
have been a solace sufficient to counterbalance all 
my other misfortunes, and whose apprehension, 
had they been able to effect it, would have been 
the completion of them. The answers that my 
interrogatories on this head extorted, were calcu- 
lated only to confirm my suspicions : for these 
refiners on the art of tormenting, never fail, when 
they can find an opportunity, to blend an habitual 
silence, which puzzles and distracts you, with a 
simulated sincerity, which drives you to despair ; 
whether they speak or are silent, you are sure to 
suffer no less from their freedom than from 
their reserve. 

It is by these manoeuvres that father and son, 
husband and wife, nay a whole parentage, may at 
once be inhabitants of the Bastille, without so 
much as suspecting themselves to be surrounded 
by objects so dear to them ; or may languish there 
in the persuasion, that one common distress in- 
velops the whole race, though a part may have 
been fortunate enough to escape it. When a 
Governor of St. Domingo took in his head, a few 
years back, to rid himself one morning of the 
Courts of justice* and to pack all the officers 
together in a vessel for France, immediately on 



THB BASflLLB, jj 

tbeir arrival, this whole American Parliament 
were lodged in the Bastille. 

There these poor men found the servitude more 
oppressive than that of their own negroes : their 
confinement lasted eight months; during which 
not one knew what was become of the others. 
At length they were tried, and declared innocent : 
and all the indemnification they got, was per- 
mission to return, and resume their employments I 

But if they are so car^&l to hinder the captives 
from having the slightest intercourse, or even the 
most distant knowledge of each other, they are 
not so scrupulous of making them acquainted that 
they are not alone in misfortune. Those double 
floors, those vaulted roofs, impervious to consola- 
tion, are sure indexes to point out to the wr6fched 
prisoner, that there is, above or below him, 
another wretch, whose condition is no less lament- 
able than his own. The doors, the keys, the 
bohs, are toot silent : the creaking of the first, the 
clattering of the second, and the hollow jarring of 
the last, resonnd from afar along those flights of 
stone that form the stair-case, and echo dreadfully 
in th6 iraBt vacuity of the towers. Hence it was 
easy for me to compute the number of my neighs 
bours ; and this was a fresh source of sorrowful 
reflexion* 

To be sensible that you have over your head, or 

under your leet, an afflicted being, on whom you 

c 



34 MEMOIRS OF 

might confer, or with whom you might participate, 
comfort ; to hear him walk, sigh ; to reflect that 
he is but three feet distant : to consider the 
plcftsure there would be in breaking through that 
narrow space, together with the impossibility of 
effecting it ; to have cause for affliction, no less 
from the bustle that announces the arrival of a 
new comer, who is to partake of, without 
alleviating your bondage, than from the silence 
of the dungeons, that gives you notice of the 
happier lot of your former companions in misery, 
are punishments beyond what the imagination can 
conceive : they are those of Tantalus, Ixion, and 
Sisyphus, united. 

But this anxiety is sometimes still more horrible. 
I am convinced that my fellow ^captive in the 
chamber below mine died during my imprison- 
ment ; though I cannot say whether his death was 
natural, or inflicted. It happened, one morning 
about two o'clock, that I heard a prodigious 
uproar upon the stair-case : a vast number of 
people were ascending the stairs in a tumultuous 
manner, and advanced no farther than the door of 
that chamber : they seemed there to be engaged 
in much bustle aud dispute, and to be running 
frequently backwards and forwards : I heard very 
distinctly repeated struggles and groans. 

Now was this an act of succour, or tn assMiiiui- 
tion ? Was it the introduction of a Physician, or 



THE BASTILLE, 35 

an Executioner ? I know not : but three days 
after, about the same hour in the morning, I 
heard, at the same door, a noise less violent : I 
I thought I could distinguish the carrying up, the 
setting down, the filling, and the shutting of a 
coffin : these ceremonies were succeeded by a 
strong smell of juniper. In another place these 
proceedings would not have caused so much 
alarm : but judge what an impression must they 
not have made, in the Bastille; at such an hour, 
and at so small a distance ! 

Whilst the regimen of the Bastille places by 
these means, and by others which I shall advert to 
presently,, the life of every one thrown into it, in 
the hands of his keepers ; it will also have his fate 
dependent on them alone. They are conscious, and 
it is one of their principal enjoyments, that their 
regimen is productive of nothing but despair: they 
are well aware, that there are moments, when 
such in particular of their victims, as have not had 
their courage awed by crimes, or their sensibility 
enervated by habitual slavery, would be tempted 
to put an end, by a transitory pang, to so tedious 
a succession of agonies: and that is precisely 
what they labour to prevent. They are even 
more apprehensive lest one of their captives should 
evade the torments they inflict on him, by death, 
than by any escape. This Phalaris of a Governor 
is, above all, anxious that his prisoners may feel 



%6 MEMOIRS OF 

to the utmost the fiery tortures of his M/.; and, 
by ao art peculiar to the Bastille, the multifarious 
precautions, which they adopt in order to obviate 
this pretended danger, are no less humiliating than 
painfuL ; are as fit to foment a desire of the catas- 
trophe, which they are calculated to prevent, as 
they are to hinder the execution of it, 

I observed that a prisoner was not permitted to 
have scissors, knife, or razors. Thus, when they 
•erve him with provision, repelled by his sighs and 
watered by his tears, it is necessary that the Turn- 
key cut every morsel for him. For this purpose 
he makes use of a knife rounded at the point, 
which he is careful to put up in his pocket, after 
each dissection. 

One cannot prevent the nails from shooting out, 
or the hair from growing. But a prisoner has no 
means of getting rid of these incumbrances without 
undergoing a fresh humiliation : he must request 
the loan of a pair of scissors ; the Turn-key stands 
by while he is using them, and carries them oft 
immediately after. 

As to the beard, it is the Surgeon's business to 
shave ; and this office he performs twice a week. 
He and the Turn -key. Agent, or Super-intendant 
to all that passes in the Tower, carefiiUy watch 
that the hand of the prisoner does not approach 
too near the formidable instrument : like the axe 
of the Executioner, it is developed only at the 



THE BASTILLE. 37 

moment of using it. They still remember, in the 
Bastille, the disturbance occasioned there by ^he 
temerity of Mr. Laify ; though at a time when he 
little suspected his impending fate. He one day 
got hold of a razor, and in a jocular manner refused 
to give it up. That did not indicate any very 
desperate design ; nevertheless the alarm-bell 
resounded throughout the castle. The guard was 
put under arms, and twenty bayonets pointed 
towards the chamber : perhiaps they we^ even 
preparing the cannon ; when peace was restored 
by the return of the dreadful tool into its case. 

It is futile and ridiculous to urge the pretence, 
that this circumspection of theirs has for its object 
the security of the keepers, no less than that of 
the captives. What can be dreaded from a man 
loaded with such heavy chains, hemmed in by ^ 
many walls, encompassed by so many guards, and 
watched with so much attention ? But whatever 
their motive for being afraid to leave him so 
miserable a resource, it is evident that it is despair 
they are the most apprehensive of. Now they 
know that this depair is the consequence only of 
their own re-iterated tortures; and they disarm 
his hands, merely to have it in their power to 
rend his heart with impunity. 

I have often mentioned the Turn-keys^ without 
explainiiig the nature of their office. They are 
the subaltern officers of the castle; and have charge 



iS MEMOIRS OF 

of all that relates to the service of the prisoners. 
This indeed is but trifling ; for all they have to do 
is, to distribute the provisions throughout the 
cages within their respective districts. They visit 
them thrice a day, at seven o'clock in the morn- 
ing, at eleven, and at six in the afternoon : those 
are the hours of breakfast, of dinner and supper. 
They are closely watched, lest they should make 
a longer stay than is requisite to deposit their 
bufthen : thus in the twenty-four ages that com- 
pote a day, or rather a night, in the Bastille, a 
prisoner has but these three short reliefs. 

The turn -keys are not even required to make 
the beds, or to sweep out the rooms. The reason 
assigned for it, b, that in the execution of this 
business they might be ill-treated, or perhaps 
assassinated. The justice of this pretext admits 
an enquiry ; the thing itself is certain. Neither 
age, nor infirmity, nor delicacy of sex, can exempt 
the prisoners from this necessity ; the man of 
letters, unaccustomed to these operations, and the 
opulent man no less unacquainted with them, are 
equally obliged to submit to the same etiquette. 

The turn-keys indeed do not invariably conform 
to it : they sometimes render services that cannot 
be exacted of them. But they must do it with as 
much secrecy, as if they were holding an illicit 
correspondence with an enemy : the Fury dis- 
guised in the form of a Governor, who will take 



THE BASTILLE. 39 

the alarm if he cannot hear, as he passes by the 
dungeons, the groans or lamentations of his 
captives, would quickly punish them for their ill- 
timed lenity. 

It is in this total silence, I must again repeat it, 
in this general desolation, in this void existence 
more cruel than death, since it does not exclude 
grief, but rather engenders every kind of grief ; it 
is in this universal abstraction, it cannot be 
repeated too often, that what is called a Prisoner 
of State in the Bastille, that is, a man who has 
displeased a Minister, a Clerk in office, or a Valet, 
is given up without resource, without any other 
diversion but his own thoughts or his alarms, to 
the most bitter sentiment that can agitate a heart 
yet undegraded by criminality, to that of oppressed 
innocence, which foresees its destruction without 
the possibility of a vindication : it is thence that 
he may fruitlessly implore the succour of the laws, 
the communication of what he is accused of, the 
interference of his friends : his prayers, his suppli- 
cations, his groans are not only uttered in vain ; 
but they are even acknowledged by his tyrants to 
be useless : and this is the only information they 
vouchsafe him. Abandoned to all the horror of 
listlessness, of inaction, he is daily sensible of the 
approaching close of his existence ; and he is at 
the same time sensible, that th^ prolong it only to 
prolong his punishment. Derision »nd insult are 



40 MEMOIRS OF 

added lo cruelty, in order to increase the bitter- 
ness of privation. 

For instance, at the end of about eight months, 
I conceived the idea of eluding the tedious hours 
of my confinement by a recollection of my past 
mathematical studies. I accordingly applied for 
a case of instruments ; and took care to limit the 
site to iAret ituhes^ in order to obviate all pretext 
for a refusal. This favour I was obliged to sollidt 
for the space of two months ; perhaps a Cabinet 
Coandl, was convened to consider of it. It was 
at length granted : the case arrived — but without 
compass. On signifying my disappointment at it, 
they informed me coolly, that arms are prohibited 
in the Bastille. 

I had to sollidt afresh, to petition, to memoria- 
lise, to discuss seriously the difference between a 
mathematical case ot instruments and a cannon. 
After another month, thanks to the charity and to 
the invention of the Commissary, the compasses 

were brought. But in what fashion ? ^made of 

bone. Of such substsnce had they fabricated, at 
my expence, all that in a case of instruments 
should be made of steel. 

I still preserve this new-fashioned piece of 
geometrical apparatus. After having kept it as 
the ornament of my study whilst I live, I shall be 
careful that after my death it shall be consigned 
to some magazine, or museum, where it may not 



THE BASTILLE, 41 

be at a loss for spectators. It will there hold a 
distinguished place amidst the monuments of 
barbarian industry, of which travellers sometimes 
£ftvour us with a sample. No invention of the 
most ingenious among the savage tribes can be 
more deservedly an object of public curiosity. 

In consequence of that principle, that the man, 
on whom the King, or rather the Minister, has 
thus laid his hand, must become invisable without 
redemption, they have resolved that the existence 
of the prisoners should be confided in the hands 
of those who are employed to secrete them ; in 
order to render their underhand, clandestine 
practices consistent. The Governor finds them in 
provisions by contract, and gains an immense 
profit by a kind of r^al sixpenny ordinary. 

Government has founded fifteen places in the 
Bastille, the salaries of which are paid, whether 
they are occupied or not at the rate of ten Ftaach 
livres, or eight shillings English ^^^i>m. Hence 
the Governor of the castle draws a revenue of 
near 2500!. per annum. 

But that is not all : in drawing up a Lettre-de 
cachety which gives him a new Boarder, they add 
to the primitive foundation so much per head, 
proportioned to the quality of each respective 
rank. Thus, a Plebeian, or one of the lowest order* 
brings to the general mess, over and above the 
pistole allowed on the establishment, half a crown 



42 memoir:^ of 

extraordinary /rr iii'tw ; a Tradesman, or Civilian 
of the ordinary class, four shillings ; a Priest, a 
Financier, or a common Judge, eight shillings ; a 
Counsellor in Parliament, twelve shillings ; a 
Lieutenant -General in the army, a Guinea ; and 
a Marshal of France, a Guinea and a half. In 
this Ministerial cadastre (27) I know not the rate 
allotted for a Prince of the Blood Royal. 

They have, besides, granted to the Governor 
the privilege of stowing in his vaults near an 
hundred buts of wine free of all duties. This is 
no inconsiderable object, and, it should seem, 
would render it the easier for him to provide for 
his lodgers in a handsome manner. 

But let us see how far it is attended with such 
effect. He sells this indemnity to a Publican of 
Paris, named Joii^ for two hundred and fifty 
pounds sterling ; and takes in exchange the very 
worst kind of wines, for the prisoners' consump- 
tion ; which wine we may justly suppose, is no 
better than vinegar. He considers the establish- 
ment of eight shillings per day as part of the 
income attached to his office, which he is to give 
no account of, and which has nothing to do with 
the reckoning on the head of subsistence. On 
this he employs only the extraordinary surplus, 
which the liberality of the Sovereign destined 
merely to augment it ; and this very surplus he is 
careful not entirely to expend. The detail of 



THE BjiSTILLE. 43 



these paiticnlais is latlier ignoble : nerertlieks, 
it is extremdy requisite they be made knoim. 
There are prisoneis in the Rasrillr, who at a meal 
are not aUowed above four ounces of meat. 
These portions have been weighted mocc than 
once. The inferior 0€icers know the fiict, and 
lament it. (28) Nothing could be more caaly 
verified, if the Minister would shidd firom the 
resentment of their chief, the Subalterns who 
might disclose his sordid peculation. 

There were some tables, indeed, better supplied ; 
and mine, I allow was of the number. But is 
this abundance a good, or an evil, to those whom 
it is granted ? This is a question I cannot answer 
with precision. Though it carries, a more honour* 
able appearance, perhaps it may conceal some 
dangerous artifice. I have known several who 
during their confinement in the Bastille have 
lived on milk alone: others, as Mr. De la 
Bourdotmaief have sollidted and obtained permis- 
sion to be served with provisions from their own 
houses. They constantly refiised me this privilege, 
and even, for the first e^ht months, that of buy- 
ii^ any article whatever, as I have already 
observed, although I had money deposited in the 
hands of the Officers. 

I made amends for this, by the most scrupulous 
attention to eat but little of eveiy dish ; to wash 
several times whatever had a suspicious appear- 



44 MEMOIRS OF 

anoe t yet, notwithstanding all these precautions, 
I couM not entirely escape what I dreaded with 
too much reason. The eighth day of my con- 
finement I was seized with a cholic and a vomit- 
ing of blood, to which I was afterwards ever 
aobject; a disorder, of which the re-iterated 
attacks indicated the frequent renewal of the 
cause. 

On this subject I was neither doubtful nor 
silent. I wrote an hundred times to the Lieu- 
tenant*General of the Police, that they were giving 
me poison. I declared the same thing verbally to 
his substitute ; I declared it to the Physician, to 
the Surgeon, to the officers themselves of the 
Castle: all the answer I could ever get was an 
insulting laugh. 

" If they wished to poison you, how comes it 
"that you are still alive?" many persons have 
aaid, when I recounted these extraordinary 
symptoms; and the same objections may now 
perhaps be suggested by my readers : but a little 
reflection will quickly do it away. No, most 
assuredly; I never could have survived the 
murderers design, had it been that of Government, 
of the Minister : but my present existence, which 
I impute to the strength of my constitution justifies 
him alone^ Can we suppose that hands, wUdi 
would be ready to execute so base a villailiy, if he 
was capable of requiring it, would have vfrtve 



THE BASTILLE, 45 

to resist a lucrative solicitation from another 
quarter? « . 

By the unaccountable regimen, of which we 
ve speaking, nothing that may serve either to 
amuse or to console a prisoner is allowed to 
approach him; but whatever may contribute 
either to afflict his mind, or to injure his health, 
finds no such difficuUy of admittance. There are 
four officers of the higher order; the inferior 
order consists pf four Turn-keys ; and the kitchen 
is provided with the same number of Cooks or 
Scullions. ■ These twelve persons are well informed 
whom they serve, notwithstanding the ridiculous 
afiectation, with which it is pretended to keep 
them in ignorance of it : they are all permitted 
to go out, and to mix every day with the inhabit- 
ants of the city : there .they have houses, wives, 
friends, acquaintance. Is it so difficult a matter, 
then, to find a single villain in a society whose 
office is but a tissue of flagitious actions ? or is it 
more so for him, who is once suborned, to discern 
what par( he is to give the mortal blow to, since 
he is not denied access to any ? But we cannot 
suppose them capable of such horrible barbarity ! 
Could we suppose them capable of those already 
described ? 

So far is this danger from being imaginary, 
tl^it they formerly posted in the kitchen a centinel, 
whose business it was to examine, and keep 



46 MEMOIRH OF 

acoottnt of all who approached the fire-places^ or 
the stoves. This precaution, still more salutary 
than offensive, has for some years back been 
omitted : are the evil designs, the practibility of 
which it clearly indicated, become more difficult 
to perpetrate ? 

That, of which I was the object, was not 
oonsummated t but the loudness of my complaints 
might have disconcerted the plan, and my cares 
in part may have rendered it fruitless. I do not 
mean to suggest, that all those to whom I 
revealed my suspicions on this head, were accom- 
plices in the crimes by which they were occasioned. 
The real guilty person was perhaps afraid to verify 
too quickly my apprehensions, lest an enquiry 
should be the result of it. The habitual weakness 
under which I languished, the imminent danger I 
was in at the close of 1 78 1, my death being then 
considered as inevitable, might have induced them 
to relax in their endeavours, and to think all 
attempts of that tendency superfluous. 

But even supposing I was mistaken in the cause 
I assigned for events, the ill effects of which I still 
carry about me ; allowing these apprehensions and 
symptoms to have been merely the product of an 
imagination disordered through too much sus- 
ceptibility \ is it not shocking that the ooofine- 
ment of the Bastille should be calculated to 
produce fears of that natnrci by rendering it 



THE BASTILLE, 47 

impossible for a prisoner to avoid those secret 
machinations which give rise to the dread he 
labours under ? 

After all, this dispute is merely verbal. I wiU 
admit, that in a place, where the Italian Exili (29) 
kept about a century ago a school for poisoning, 
they have not preserved any one of his receipts ; 
and that a single additional cruelty may be 
repugnant to men, whose ofEce, I repeat again, is 
the continual perpetration of cruelties : but will 
not a residence of twenty months, with all its 
concomitant evils, in a place where existence is 
but a repetition of tortures worse than death, 
essentially impair the source of life ? Will near 
two years passed in these dungeons, without air, 
without exercise, in all the horrors of listlessness, 
in all the anguish of suspence, or rather of despair, 
make less impression on the vital organs, than the 
most efficacious poison ? It may be slower x but 
is it less certain ? Between these two methods of 
destroying, what difference is there but the 
time? 

But are they totally deprived of air and exer- 
cise, say they who have read the ancient accounts 
of the Bastille, and even they whose curiosity has 
led them to visit it ? for it is not withdrawn from 
the inspection of the curious. The Governor, 
although his mansion is without, often enters the 
prison to receive his visitors ; and in the prison all 



4t MEMOIRS or 

hb colleagues, from the King's Lieutenant down 
to the very lowest Scullion, receive their*s. On 
days of rejoicing, when there is a display of fire- 
works or illuminations, the public are permitted 
even in crowds to ascend the Towers, that they 
may thence behold the sight to advantage. On 
mdi occasions they reflect the very image of peace 
and tranquility. All these gaping strangers are 
in perfect ignorance of what passes, and of what 
it shut up, within those impenetrable vaults, the 
oatsides of which they gaze on with admiretion. 
Some one amongst them perhaps may tread on the 
sepulchre of his friend, his relation, his father ; 
who thinks him two hundred leagues distant 
employed in his business, or engaged in his 
pleasures. 

All, in short, who are favoured with this 
exterior examination, seeing a garden pretty large, 
platforms raised to a considerable elevation, 
where in consequence the air is pure and the view 
picturesque, and being assured that all this is in 
common allotted to the use of the prisoners, leave 
the Castle, fully persuaded, though the life in the 
Bastille may not be agreeable, yet that these 
alleviations render it supportable. This might 
have been the case formerly : I shall mention a 
ha that has happened lately. 

The present Governor, named /V Ltmma^^ is 
an ingenious man, and knows how to turn every 



THE BASTILLE. 49 

thing to the best advantage ; he considered, that 
the garden might afford a handsome addition 
to his income ; and for this purpose let it out for 
a certain annual stipend to a Gardener, who sells 
the roots and fruit that it produces : but, in order 
to make the better bargain, he thought it necessary 
to exclude the prisoners. A letter was therefore 
expedited, signed Amelot^ which prohibited the 
prisoners from entering the garden. 

With regard to the platforms of the Towers, 
though from their great elevation, it is impossible 
for any one to be recognized on them, or for him 
to recognize any one below ; yet as they directly 
overlook the Rue St, Antoine^ from which the 
public are not yet banished, prisoners were never 
permitted heretofore to walk there, unless escorted 
by one of the jailors, either an officer or turn-key. 
It was, however, discovered of late, that is, 
within these three years, that this talk was both 
unprofitable and toilsome ; besides, that it afforded 
the prisoners an opportunity of conversing with 
the sentry. The vigilance of Mr. De Launay 
took the alarm : and partly in consideration of 
the ease of his colleagues, partly on account of the 
dangers he apprehended, a letter was dispatched, 
signed Anielot^ which forbad the use of the plat- 
forms, as well as the garden. 

All that remains then for walking in, is the 
Court of the castle. This is an oblong scjuare, 

D 



so MEMOIRS OF 

ninety-six feet by sixty. The walls, by which it 
is surrounded, arc one hundred feet high, without 
any aperture : so that it is in (act a large pit, where 
the cold is insupportable in winter, because the 
North wind rushes into it ; in summer it is no less 
so, because, there being no circulation of the air, 
the heat of the Sun makes it a very oven. Such 
is the sole Lyceum^ where those among the 
prisoners, who are indulged with the privilege of 
walking, a privilege that is not granted to all, 
may for a few moments of the day disgorge the 
infected air of their habitations. 

But it must not be supposed, that the act of 
tormenting, with which they keep their captives 
in misery, is suffered to relax during this transitory 
interval : for it may easily be conceived, how little 
they can enjoy walking in a place so circumscribed; 
where there is no shelter from the rain ; where 
nothing but the inconveniences of the weather is 
experienced ; where with the appearance of a 
shadow of liberty, the centinels that surround 
them, the universal silence that prevails, and the 
sight of the clock, which is alone allowed to break 
that silence, present them with but too certain 
marks of slavery. 

This particular may be worthy of a remark. 
The Clock of the Castle looks into the Court. It 
is covered with a handsome dial-plate : but, who 
would imagine the ornaments with which they 



THE BASTILLE. 51 

have thought proper to decorate it? Chains 
carved with much exactness, and highly finished. 
It is supported by two figures, bound by the 
hands, the feet and the waist : the two ends of 
this curious garland, after being carried all round 
the plate, return to form a prodigious knot in 
front ; and, to signify that they menace both sexes 
alike, the Artist either inspired by the genius of 
the place, or else in pursuance of precise direc- 
tions, has carefully made the distinction of a mcUe 
and a female. Such is the spectacle, with which 
the eyes of a prisoner are regaled during his walk : 
a large inscription in letters of gold engraved on 
black marble informs him, that he is indebted for 
it to M. Raymond Gualbert de Sartines. (30) 

Yet do not imagine, that he enjoys as much of 
this as he could desire. The portion of time, 
that is allotted to each prisoner to view the sky, 
which he can do but in part, is measured out with 
the most oeconomical exactness. This measure 
depends on the number of the confined. As one 
never enters till another is gone out, and as, 
thanks to the letters signed Amelot^ this is the 
only funnel they are allowed to partake of, when 
the Bastille is full, the portion is very small. I 
perceived the arrival of a new guest, or of a new 
walker, by what was deducted from mine to con« 
tribute to his recreation. 

But observe that you are not carried away with 



)i MEMOIRS Ob 

tile erruoeous yAex^ that the epjoyment uf this 
relief, thm roodifietl, b peaceable and complete. 
Tills Court is the only passage to the kitchen, and 
to those parts where the Officers of the Castle 
rccehre their visitors ; through it the ponrejors of 
every kind, the workmen, &c are obliged to 
pais. Now, as it is requisite, abore all things, 
that a prisoner neiiher see, nor be seen ; when- 
ever a stranger approaches, he is obliged to fly 
into what is called the chset. This is an opening 
ol tweWe feet in length, and two wide, made in an 
antient vaulL To this hole, which they term the 
cias^t^ a prisoner must betake himself with precipi- 
tation, on the approach of so much as a man with 
a bundle of herbs ; and he must be scnipuloasly 
careful to shut and fasten the door ; for the smallest 
suspicion of curiosity would at least be punished 
with close imprisonment. This alternative will 
frequently occur : I have often reckoned in an 
hour, the term of duration for the very longest 
walk, three quarters of the hour consumed in that 
inactive and humiliating situation in the closet. 

I know not whether thisVegulation is established 
by a letter signed Amtht ; but sure I am, that it 
is of a recent date. Till of late years, no stranger 
was admitted into the Court after nine in the 
morning, without the most indispensable necessity: 
the provisions were ready prepared ; visits were 
paid without ; and the manoeuvres of the chtet 



THE BASTILLE. 53 

took place only on such occasions as might from 
their urgency seem to excuse it. 

But that is not all : this walk itself, so insuffi- 
cient, and so cruelly modified, as to be rendaed 
rather an additional mortification, than a comfoft, 
is suspended daily ; and that by the arbitrary win 
of the Governor. If a cnrioas person has obtained 
permission to visit the prison; if any repairs 
require the passage backward and forward of the 
workmen ; if the Governor gives a grand dinner, 
which must occasion the frequent passage of his 
servants, his kitchen being within, and his dwell- 
ing without ; for any one of these reasons the 
walk is prohibited. 



END OF VOL. II. 



<^y-» 



Collectanea a^amantaa. 




MEMOIRS OF THE BASTILLE. 




iCOLLECTANEA ADAMANTiiEA.--rv J 



MEMOIRS 

OF 

THE BASTILLE. 

Cran0lateli from t^e jTrmcfi 

OP THE CELEBRATED 

Mr. LINGUET, 

WHO WAS IMPRISONED THERE FROM 
SEPTEMBER 1780 TO MAY 1782. 



EDMUND GOLDSMID, F.R.H.S. 



VOL. III. 



PRIVATELY PRINTEO. 

EDINBURGH. 
1886. 






This Edition is iimited to 275 small-paper and 75 
largt'Paper copies. 



MEMOIRS 

OF 

THE BASTILLE. 

PART III. 



IN 1 781, during the hot weather for which that 
summer was remarkable, labouring under a 
vomiting of blood, oppressed by the heat of 
the season, and by a weakness of stomach though 
not occasioned yet fomented by it, I passed the 
whole months of July and August, without being 
suffered to quit my chamber. The pretext was, a 
work that was going forward upon the platforms. 
Yet the workmen might easily have ascended on 
the outside ; and they did in fact ascend that way : 
all that it was necessary to convey through the 



6 MEMOIRS or 

court was the stones and other materials. This 
operation might have been done, as formerly, 
every morning before nine o'clock. But M. Df 
Launey thought that would be rather troublesome : 
it appeared much easier for him to, say Lit there 
be no tvalking ! and there was none. 

In order to form an idea of the anguish of this 
privation, we must consider, that it is the last they 
can put in force to rack their prisoner; we must 
reflect, that it not only exposes him to physical 
inconveniences, and necessarily impairs his health ; 
but that the motion of the body being the sole 
expedient to assuage the convulsions of the mind, 
by taking away that resource these are rendered 
the more poignant ; that when he has not a single 
minute in the day to vary at least the nature of his 
torment, his heart ever heaving with sighs seems 
to beat with more pungent grief, and with stronger 
pulsations, against the walls with which it is 
environed on every side. 

Thus in the prisons belonging to the ordinary 
courts of justice this rigour is considered as the 
most severe it is allowed to inflict on criminals, 
previous to their conviction. A secret custody, or 
absolute seclusi&n takes place only in those short 
intervals, during which the prisoner might derive 
from without, information repugnant to the 
execution of the laws. The motive for this con- 
cealment may be the particular situation of places, 



THE BASTILLE, 7 

or a regard to humanity, which leaving the 
prisoners a free and open communication permits 
the suspension in a single instance, by banishing 
one prisoner from the society of the rest, for as 
long a time only as the motive for this suspension 
may last : it becomes indeed necessary to prohibit 
the privilege to one, in order to preserve it to all 
the others. 

And, besides, this temporary inaction is much 
alleviated, particularly if he is innocent, by the 
preparations for his trial. He sees his judges, bis 
accusers, his witnesses ; he knows the charges that 
are alleged against him. Whether they confront 
him, or only interrogate him, he has the satisfaction 
of not being alone; and whenever one of these 
conflicts is at an end, the intermediate solitude 
becomes precious, and even necessary to prepare 
for a second. 

But, in the Bastille, not one of these motives, or 
of these solaces, can be admitted. The secrti 
custody is there perpetual : all a prisoner's walks 
are solitary as his mansion : they can neither be an 
impediment to the trial, when resolved on, nor to 
the means or facility of conviction. This being 
the case, to step in with an arbitrary prohibition ; 
to deprive a prisoner of the power of raising, for a 
few minutes in the day, his eyes swolen with tears, 
to the sun, which seems to avoid him, is the 
excess no less of injustice, than of cruelty. 



J 



S MEMOIRS OF 

What then shall we say, when no trial is in- 
tended; when this prohibition falls on men, 
against whom hatred and vengeance cannot even 
find the pretext for an arraignment; when it is 
kept in force for months together; when it 
depends on the caprice of a Satellite ; whose 
baseness is equalled only by his barbarity; who, 
puffed up with the privilege of committing in his 
fortress outrages on men of worth and distinction 
with impunity, thinks himself powerful in propor- 
tion as he torments them, and honourable sis he 
insults them in their affliction ? 

It may be urged, that these particulars apply 
rather to the character of the persons appointed to 
preside, than to the fundamental constitution of 
the prison. True : but it is of itself sufficiently 
severe, without receiving an addition from the 
capricious tyranny of Governors : and it does 
receive that addition ; for, as I have before 
observed, the barbarities of the Bastille have been 
much increased within these few years. Formerly, 
they endeavoured to guard their prisoners : now 
they strive to make a sport of their miseries. 

And, what may seem very extraordinary, the 
additions, whether inhuman or scandalous, with 
which the present government have enriched a 
regimen already so scandalous and inhuman, they 
have extended even to the very mercenaries whom 
they employ. In former times, as I have already 



THM BASTILLE, 9 

observed, the Officers of the superior order had a 
right to see singly, when they thought proper, the 
prisoner confided to their common vigilance. 
Being all reputed alike trusty, their particular 
visits gave neither cause for suspicion nor alarm : 
and, as there are four of them, there was often one 
to be found among them, whose heart was not so 
unsusceptible of pity, and who often consecrated 
some moments of the day to conversations ever 
pleasing to those who partook of them. 

This mark of condescension displeased the 
Ministry ; and a letter came, signed as before, 
which prohibited the Officers from entering alone 
into the towers, and which required them to go at 
least two at a time, without including the Turn- 
key. The visits of the Physician are restricted to 
the same formality. The$e bull -dogs are no 
longer sufiered to walk but in pairs. 

This monkish regulation has produced the 
desired effect, that is a total discontinuance of 
visits. It is difficult to find in such a pack two 
souls equally susceptible. Besides, it would be 
necessary to have the matter preconcerted, and for 
them both to be ready at the same moment : 
moreover there is no intercourse of friendship 
between them : they are mutually jealous and 
diffident of each other: debased, even in their 
now eyes, by their abominable office, they tremble 
at the interpretations that might be affixed to the 



lo MEMOIRS OF 

mott simple expression : by the Adjunct, or rather 
the Spy, who must ever accompany them : finally, 
hit innovation being an index of the increase of 
tererity in the Government, it has operated in 
them towards the increase of insensibility. Thus 
is this trivial consolation no longer to be met with 
in the Bastille ; and it is only three years since it 
has been banished from it. 

But with regard to the health of the prisoners, 
perhaps the reader may be curious to know what 
degree of attention they pay to it. lyArgensofty 
Lieutenant of the Police ^ in a letter to Madame de 
Mainienoftf concerning State-Prisons, about the 
beginning of the present century, expresses him- 
self in the following terms : '* I can assure you 
that the prisoners have nothing to wish for, either 
in the articles of diet, or cloathing(3i): and I may 
add, that the Governors of the Bastille and 
Vincennes manifest towards theirs, a charitable 
attention, beyond what could be either required 
or expected : on every slight indisposition they 
afford them all the assistance, both spiritual and 
temporal, their condition will admit ; but the 
privation of liberty renders them insensible to ever}' 
other benefit, ^^ 

Although we may be permitted to express our 
surprise at the coalition of those two words, 
charily and the Bastille ; though we may harbour 
our suspicions, from the indifference of the con- 



THE BASTILLE, ii 

eluding phrase, that M. D'Argenson in speaking 
thus conformed to the language of a Lieutenant of 
Police^ that is to say, of a man devoted by his 
office to barbarity, and interested in the justifica- 
tion of those to whom he is necessarily an 
accomplice; we may, notwithstanding, suppose 
that there was some colour of truth in his 
assertions. If so, things are vastly altered ; and 
the fact will but serve to prove more fully the late 
augmentation of cruelty in a place, where from the 
beginning it appeared to have arrived at the 
extreme height of depravation. 

First, as to those transitory complaints, or 
sudden attacks, which can only be obviated by 
ready assistance and immediate application, a 
prisoner must either be perfectly free from them, 
or must sink under them if they are severe ; for it 
would be in vain to look for any immediate 
succour, particularly during the night. E^ch 
room is secured by two thick doors, bolted and 
locked, both within and without ; and each tower 
is fortified with one still stronger. The Turn- 
keys lie in a building entirely separate, and at a 
considerable distance : no voice can possibly reach 
them. 

The only resource left is to knock at the door : 
but will an apoplexy, or an haemorrhage, leave a 
prisoner the ability to do it ? It is even extremely 
doubtful, whether the Turn-keys would hear the 



'jk 



12 AfEMOIRS OF 

knocking ; or whether once lain down, ihcy would 
think proper to hear it. 

Those nevertheless, whom the disorder may not 
have dq)rived of the use of their legs and voice, 
have still one metho<l left of applying for assistance. 
The ditch, with which the castle is surrounded, is 
only an hundred and fifty feet wide : on the brink 
of the opposite bank is placed a gallery, called the 
passage of the rounds; and on this gallery the 
sentinels are posted. The windows overlook the 
ditch; through them, therefore, the patient may 
cry out for succour: and if the interior grate, 
which repels his breath, as w*as before explained, 
b not carried too far into the chamber ; if his 
voice is powerful ; if the wind is moderate ; if the 
sentinel is not asleep, it is not impossible but he 
may be heard. 

The Soldier must then cry to the next sentr}- ; 
and the alarm must circulate from one sentry to 
another, till it arrives at the guard-room. The 
Corporal then goes forth to see what is the matter; 
and, when informed from what window the cries 
issue, he returns back again the same way, (all 
which takes up no inconsiderable time) and passes 
through the gate into the interior of the prison. 
He then calls up one of the Turn-keys ; and the 
Turn-key proceeds to call up the Lackey of the 
King's Lieutenant, who must also awaken his 
Master, in order to get the key : for all, without 



THE BASTILLE. 13 

exception, are deposited every night at that officer's 
lodging. There is no garrison, where in time of 
war the service is more strictly carried oh than in 
the Bastille. Now against whom do they make 
war? 

The key is searched for : it is found. The 
Surgeon must then be called up : the Chaplain 
must also be roused, to complete the escort. All 
these people must necessarily dress themselves: so 
that, in about two hours, the whole party arrives 
with much bustle at the sick man's chamber. 

They find him, perhaps Weltering in his blood, 
and in a state of insensibility, as happened to me ; 
or suffocated by an apoplexy, as has happened to 
others. "What steps they take, when he is irreco- 
verably gone, I know not : if he still possesses 
some degree of respiration, or if he recovers it, they 
feel his pulse, desire him to have patience, tell 
him they will write next day to the Physician, and 
then wish him a good night. 

Now this Physician, without whose authority 
the Surgeon-Apothecary dare not so much as 
administer a pill, resides at the Tuilleries^ at three 
miles distance from the Bastille, He has other 
practice : he has a charge ne^r the King's person ; 
another near the Prince's. His duty often eatries 
him to Versailles : his return must be waited. He 
comes at length : but he has a fixed annual stipend, 
whether he do more or less; and, howeverhonest, 



14 MEMOIRS OF 

he mu»t naturally be inclined to find the disorder 
as slight as may l)e, in order that his visits be the 
less required. They are the more induced to 
believe his representations, inasmuch a$ they are 
apt to suspect exaggeration in the prisoner's com- 
))Uints : the negligence of his dress, the habitual 
weakness of his body, and the abjection no less 
habitual of his mind, prevent them from observing 
any alteration in his countenance, or in his pulse ; 
both are always those of a sick man : thus he is 
oppressed with a triple affliction ; first, of his 
disorder ; secondly, of seeing himself suspected of 
imposture, and of being an object of the raillery 
or of the severity of the ofhcers, for the monsters 
do not abstain from them even in this situation of 
their prisoner ; thirdly, of being deprived of every 
kind of relief, till the disorder becomes so violent 
as to put his life in danger. 

And even then, if they give any medicines, it is 
but an additional torment to him. The police of 
the prison must l^ strictly observed: every prisoner 
shut up by himself, by day and njght, whether sick 
or in health, sees his Turn-key, as I have before 
observed, only three times a day. Wlien a medi- 
cine, is brought him, they set it on the table, and 
leave it there. It is his business to warm it, to 
prepare it, to take care of himself during its 
operation : happy, if the Cook has been so 
generous, as to violate the rules of the house, by 



THE BASTILLE, 15 

reserving him a little broth ; happy, if the Turn- 
key has been possessed of the humanity to bring it, 
and the Governor to allow it. Such is the manner 
in which they treat the ordinary sick, or those who 
have strength enough to crawl from their bed to 
the fire-place. 

But when they are reduced to the last extremity, 
and unable to raise themselves from their worm- 
eaten couch, they are allowed a guard. Now let 
us see what this guard is. An invalid Soldier, 
stupid, clownish, brutal, incapable oi attention, or 
of that tenderness so requisite in the care of a sick 
person. But what is still worse, this Soldier, 
when once attached to you, is never again per- 
mitted to leave you ; but becomes himself a close 
prisoner. You must first, therefore, purchase his 
consent to shut himself up with you during your 
captivity ; and if you recover, you must support, 
as well as you can, the ill -humour, discontent, 
reproaches, and vexation of this companion, who 
will be revenged on you in health for the pretended 
services he has rendered you in sickness. Judge 
now of the sincerity of Z>'^r^<f«j^;/, the Lieutenant 
of Police, when he insisted on the temporal com- 
forts prisoners experienced in the Bastille^ and 
on the charity of the Governors, 

As to the spiritual^ if these savages, equally 
incapable of shame and pity, were at least suscep- 
tible of remorse, would they dare even to pronounce 



l6 MEMOIRS OF 

the word ? What can it remind us of, but their 
outrages upon religion, for which they have no 
more respect, than they have for humanity ? 

First, let it be remarked, that every one is not 
permitted to go to Afass in the Bastille: this is a 
special favour granted only to a small number of 
elect. I confess, it was offered to me. The 6rst 
day I was invited, they conducted me to a covered 
gallery, where I was to remain concealed, during 
the service: I did not, however, stay there long. 
Whatever slavery has of repugnance and horror, 
follows and oppresses you at the very foot of the 
altar. 

They treat the Divinity at the Bastille much in 
the same manner as they do his likeness. The 
chapel is situated under a pigeon-house, belonging 
to the King's Lieutenant : it may be about seven 
or eight feet square. On one of the sides they 
have constructed four little cages or niches, each 
to contain just one person : these have neither the 
enjoyment of light nor air, except when the door 
is open, which is only at the moment of entering, 
or going out. There do they shut up the unhappy 
votary. At the instant of receiving the sacrament 
they draw aside a little curtain, the covering of a 
grated window, through which, as through the 
tube of a spying-glass, he can see the person who 
performs the service. This mode of partaking in 
the ecclesiastical ceremonies appeared to me so 



THE BASTILLE, 17 

shocking and disagreeable, that I did not a second 
time give way to the temptation of accepting their 
offer. 

As to the confession^ I know not bow this matter 
is arranged: and I do not ims^ine that many of 
the captives, however devout, are desirous of 
having much to do with it. The Confessor is an 
officer of the higher order, on the establishment of 
the prison. Hence one may easily conceive with 
what security a prisoner might unbosom himself Ic 
this Confessor, supposing he had a conscience that 
wanted to be discharged. His office, then, is 
either a snare, or a mockery. It is beyond my 
conception, how they can have the audacity to 
propose to the prisoners in the Bastille^ that they 
should open their souls to a base prevaricator, 
who prostitutes thus the dignity of his function; 
nor how a man, the hired instrument of the earthly 
power which oppresses them, can dare to address 
them in the name of Heaven that disavows him. 

When a prisoner dies, whether after confession, 
or without it, I cannot say what they do with him; 
how they revenge themselves on the body for the 
flight of the soul, or where they suffer his ashes 
to rest, when they are unable to torment them 
any longer. Thus far I know, that they are not 
restored to his family. Surely, since the first 
establishment of the Bastille^ some deaths must 
have happened in it: but who has ever seen a 



iS MEMOIRS OF 

mortuary txtratt dated from it, except that of 
Marshal Biront Families are then abandoned 
without mercy to the confusion resulting from the 
absence of their head ; and after the affliction they 
have sufTcretl during his existence, they are denied 
even the sad consolation they might derive from 
a certain knowledge of his fate. 

Readers, who have been but too much shocked 
at the barbarities I have already descanted on, 
you think yourselves, perhaps, arrived at the con- 
clusion. It seems to you as if the imagination 
could not make a farther stretch in the art of 
devising torments beyond the multiplied refine- 
ments I have described. An assembly of execu- 
tioners would reflect with indignation on the cool 
deliberation with which they were planned, and 
the calm indifference with which they are executed. 
Yet I think I can present you with something still 
more striking : I shall lay l^efore you an anecdote 
that relates to me personally, and which exceeds 
all that you have hitherto heard. 

From the 27th of September, 1780, to October, 
1 78 1, that is to say, during Twelve months, I 
had not only remained in a total privation of all 
corrcs]X)ndence from without, or else in a corres- 
pondence worse than privation, as will be seen 
hereafter ; but also in a no less absolute ignonince 
of all transactions, whether of a public nature, or 
relative to my own affairs, or, if they had saififred 



THE BASTILLE, 19 

any intelligence to reach me, it was such only as 
was calculated to add to my despair, and to deprive 
me even of the consolation I might draw from the 
hopes of better treatment. Nay, many particulars, 
through a refinement in cruelty which sets all the 
powers of language at defiance, were false, fabri- 
cated purposely to lead me into error, and to 
render that error more afiOicting, or more fatal. 

Thus they told me, repeatedly, with a sneer, 
that it was unnecessary for me to concern myself 
about what passed in the world, because I was 
there supposed to be dead ; and they carried their 
deceit so far as to give me a detail of circumstances, 
which furious rage, or horrid wantonness had 
added to my pretended end. They assured me 
that I had nothing to expect from the zeal or 
fidelity of my friends ; not so much because they 
were subjected to the same mistake with others 
concerning my death, as because they had betrayed 
me. This double imposture was intended not 
only to afflict me, but to inspire me with an unre- 
served confidence in the only traitor I had in 
reality to dread, whom they perpetually represented 
as the only faithful friend ; and at the same time, 
to discover, by the manner in which I should 
receive these insinuations, whether I had in fact 
any secrets to expose me to treachery. 

In October, 1781, the delivery of the Queen 
affoided me some glimmering of hope. This was 



10 MEMOIRS OF 

a circumstance which they could not conceal from 
me t the discharge of the cannon over my head, 
and the public rejoicings before my eyes, pro- 
claimed it. As. these events always mark in 
France an epoch for the remission even of crimes, 
I conceived the idea, that this might extend the 
same bounty to innocence. I wrote a short letter 
to the Count df Maurepas : knowing his character, 
I strove to make it gay, nay almost merry. It 
seemed to have some eflfect on him ; and to have 
disposed him to second the voice of the Public, 
which had at length declared itself in my favour. 
This alteration of his sentiments was not concealed 
from me : but, least the circumstance should 
illude my mind with too consolatory reflections, 
they took care, at the same time, to inform me 
that he was dead ; and that he died without having 
done any thing for me. 

At length, in Deceml)er 1 78 1, my constitution 
giving way to so many trials and such variety of 
affliction ; the physical and chymical operations, 
which for fifteen months had conspired with moral 
causes to undermine it, having now produced 
their effect; finding myself attacked in so brisk a 
manner, as not even to have the hope left, of 
being able to dispute the possession of my life 
any longer ; perceiving every instant the approach 
of that in which I was about to lose, not the light 
of day, for I could not discern it, but the lensation 



THE BASTILLE. 21 

which rendered my existence the most excruciating 
torment, I began to think of making my Will. 
For this an express permission was requisite. I 
petitioned for it, and begged the Ministers would 
allow me an interview with the public officer who 
alone could manifest my last intentions, that sole 
trustee, of whom I might acquire information 
indispensably necessary, in order not to make 
illusory dispensations. 

On this subject I daily repeated, for the space 
of two months whilst my life was in danger, the 
most pressing, and, I may add, the most affecting 
intreaties. The Physician of the Bastille had the 
complaisance to carry in person to the Lieutenant 
of the Police, the Person acting immediately under 
the Ministry in affairs of this nature, a certificate 
of the state I was in, and of the imminent danger 
my life was exposed to. All the answer I obtained 
was a merciless refusal : so that, after being fifteen 
months considered as dead, deprived of gU the 
faculties of a living person, excepting*only that of 
suffering, I lost the hope itself of enjoying, after 
I should really have ceased to breathe, the last 
rights, which no country denies to the deceased; 
to those, at least, who have not been degraded by 
a solemn act of justice. 

It was thus I passed the entire months of 
December 1781, and of January 1782, fully per- 
suaded every evening, that I should not see the 



t% MEMOIRS OF 

do no othmuise than as he did^ hf cause there was 
no interest made for me. 

So that the horrors of my cnptivity, the redund- 
anqr with which they heaped on me all the 
horrors of the Bastille, proceeded only from my 
misfortune in not being concerned in some dark 
and infamous intrigue ; in not being sacrificed to a 
dextrous stroke of policy, which might conceal 
indulgence under the outward symptomsof severity; 
in having a Minister for a direct, personal, and 
implacable enemy, instead of an accomplice; in 
having no other protectors but men of wortlv ; no 
other advocates but friends without influence ; in 
short, in being committed by virtue of a Lettre-de- 
cachet signed Ameioty and not Sartines, 

Who would have conceived that, of those two 
Ministers, M. De Sartines should be the man of 
benevolence. 

The regimen of the Bastille is then neither so 
inflexible, nor so uniform : but was it even 
uniformly rigid, it would not be the less detestable; 
since this rigour would be exercised equally on 
different offences ; and, what is still more horrid, 
alike on innocence and guilt. But it is not 
possessed even of this abominable stability ; and 
it deviates from it only in direct opposition to what 
justice would prescribe. 

The above example, together with my own, 
prove that it will admit of some modification ; 



/ 



THE BASTILLE. 29 

that it is subordinate only to vengeance, or to the 
desire of the infernal monsters who direct it, to 
serve the resentment or the wants of their roasters: 
they prove, that as the Ministry of France keep a 
good store oi Letires-de-cachety ready signed, which 
they wait only the moment of applying to use, so 
they likewise have in reserve a good quantity of 
tortures which they produce only when the fatal 
order is carried into effect : they prove, that there 
is in the Bastille a book of rates to regulate the 
tormenting, no less than the dieting of each 
prisoner; and that in settling with the base 
suttler of a Governor, who has the charge of sub- 
sisting them, the price of the provisions destined 
to prolong their existence, they determine also 
the measure of gall with which they are to be 
poisoned. 

Is the regimen of the Bastille instituted then 
purposely to torment ? and whom ? Persons of 
acknowledged innocence ; since any well-founded 
suspicions are productive either of indulgent treat- 
ment, or a removal. And in whose name ? In 
the name of the King, of the supreme Magistrate, 
who is by his birth the protector of the innocent, 
the guardian of the feeble. It is by his interven- 
tion that these cruel effects are operated : it is by 
his immediate order, that they declare themselves 
authorised to subject a wretch, who has given no 
offence either to him or to the laws, or to any 



14 MEMOIRS OF 

perfection, and to the true idea of the institution ; 
tince too much pains cannot be taken to convict 
or to disconcert dangerous persons, whose freedom 
might 1>ring about the subversion of their country. 

But the fact is otherwise : the Bastilie is not 
reterved, particularly of late, for the reception of 
State Prisoners alone. The facility with which it 
is opened is redoubled in proportion to the 
inhumanity with which its government is con- 
ducted. Within these few years it seems to have 
been the preliminary of the most ordinary civil 
offences, the cognizance of which would appear to 
be the least susceptible, by their object and their 
issue, of this strange and terrible beginning. It 
is now in some measure l)ecome the anti -chamber 
of the common jail. 

A Woman of quality is suspected of having 
forged, or negotiated ya/jf bills : she is committed 
to the Bastille, 

A madman, cloathed with the insignia of a 
Magistrate of Paris, accuses a woman, who deals 
in hard ward at Lyons, of having been the Treasurer 
of a Society long since suppressed: she b com- 
mitted to Bastille, Released, after this absurd 
story loses credit, she has a dispute, on account of 
some domestic concerns, with a first clerk, who 
has a personal interest in her ruin : she is again 
committed to the Bastille, 

A Deputy is charged with having been guilty of 



THE BASTILLE. 31 

by suffering, and from which even hope itself is 
oftentimes excluded; which daily swallow up 
citizens of irreproachable character, faithful and 
zealous subjects, who in vain from the bottom of 
those dreary abodes call on the name and virtues 
of their Prince; that sacred name, which in every 
other place is the surety for the execution, but 
here serves merely to authorise the infringement 
of the laws. 

In signing a warrant for imprisonment, you 
think yourself only making a legitimate use of 
your authority, consecrated by the possession of 
several ages; an use necessary to the public 
repose, and from which no abuses take their 
origin : you suppose, that the execution of this 
order is attended only with the precautions 
necessary to secure it. 

Beneficent even in the rigours which your high 
office compels you to authorise, you have given a 
thousand proofs of your inclination to alleviate 
evils which the preservation of society requires. 
By your ordinances, the prisons destined to ensure 
the conviction and the chastisement of vice, are 
become more tolerable and less oppressive ; they 
are no longer a prelimiminary punishment, often 
more cruel than the final sentence. You have 
overturned the savage practice by which the 
Courts of Justice were authorised to put persons 
accused, or only suspected, to the torture, in order 



i6 MEMOIRS OF 

the Bastille loaded with chains, which the pretext 
of the public good may justify, and pursued by a 
clamour which their crimes may excuse, fmd there 
uncommon indulgence, and a respect denied to all 
others. 

I know not, for example, what misconduct had 
brought there, some time l>cfore roe, a man who 
had been a clandestine agent, or in other words a 
spy, for the French navy. I am far from 
asserting that he merited his fate ; but the accusa- 
tion at least, on which the Lettre-de-cachet was 
founded, must have been heavy indeed. He had 
been concerned in a very delicate business, the 
success of which did not correspond to his hopes, 
perhaps to his promises. The Minister, who 
employed him, being accustomed by his old trade 
to consider secret intelligence as affording the 
finest field for a ministerial genius, and the most 
certain resource of government ; thinking to 
manage the Marine Department like the Police^ 
and flattering himself that he could lord it over the 
English fleet, in the same manner as he did over 
the entertainments of Baris^ perhaps created this 
man his substitute in so degrading an office. Had 
he, as was imagined, in order to double his 
profits, been guilty of a double treason, always 
to be apprehended from these sort of Agents ? 
Commissioned by France to buy the secrets of 
England, had he sold to England those of France? 



THE BASTILLE, 27 

Or did his Patron^ misunderstanding his intelli- 
gence, or as was also asserted, being urged by 
personal interest to neglect it, think, on seeing 
the consequences of his folly or his prevarication, 
that he must throw the blame on the shoulders 
of his Deputy, and feign to suspect this man's 
integrity, in order to cover his own incapacity, 
or something worse? I cannot say. 

What I know is^ that this man experienced, of 
the punishments of the Bastille, no one but the 
loss of liberty : that, from the first moment, he 
was allowed books, and had permission to 
correspond with his friends : that whilst mine 
were justly alarmed by a silence no less calculated 
to deceive than to terrify, he was permitted to 
receive visits : that suspecting this, and being 
determined, in order to ascertain it, to incur the 
risk of mentioning it, in one of the rare and short 
interviews, with which I was favoured by the 
Lieutenant of Police, who was well known to be a 
friend and creature of M. De Sartines^ he 
acknowledged the fact, and imputed the extraor- 
dinary regard shewn to the prisoner I named, to 
the bounty of the Minister, who was the author of 
his detection ; and on the observation I naturally 
suggested, that tbe mode of treatment should 
depend on the nature of the accusation, and not 
on the personal qualities of each Minister, he 
made this very remarkable answer : That he could 



3© MEMOIRS OF 

thing wliich the laws rccjuire him to revere, to 
punishments unknown in the ordinary prisons, 
which are peopled with men either guilty, or at 
least accused, of some of those offences : ii is on 
the fart of the King^ that they suffocate him in 
such a manner as not entirely to intercept respira- 
tion, but to leave him barely enough to prolong 
his agony ; that they make a mockery of his 
sorrows ; that they pride themselves on his misery; 
that they consider as so many triumphs the far 
fetched sighs forced out by his affliction : it is the 
King, whom they do not shudder to name as the 
author of those barbarous collusions which he is 
unacquainted with, of that ministerial vengeance 
which his heart disavows. 

Ves, you arc unacquainted with them; you, 
whom nature bad given me for a Master, and 
whose virtues would have given me a protector 
if your throne were accessible to innocence, as it 
is to calumny ; you, whose esteem would be the 
most flattering recompence, and the most powerful 
encouragement of my labours ; you, whose frank 
and ingenuous soul is equally incapable of any 
sentiment of fear at my promise of alvrays 
declaring the truth, or of disgust at my exactness 
in fulfilling it. 

You are entirely unacquainted with dangeoos, 
which, nevertheless, are opened and shut only in 
your name ; in which existence is only nieniarad 



THE BASTILLE. 31 

by suffering, and from which even hope itself is 
oftentimes excluded; which daily swallow up 
citizens of irreproachable character, faithful and 
zealous subjects, who in vain from the bottom of 
those dreary abodes call on the name and virtues 
of their Prince ; that sacred name, which in every 
other place is the surety for the execution, but 
here serves merely to authorise the infringement 
of the laws. 

In signing a warrant for imprisonment, you 
think yourself only making a legitimate use of 
your authority, consecrated by the possession of 
several ages; an use necessary to the public 
repose, and from which no abuses take their 
origin : you suppose, that the execution of this 
order is attended only with the precautions 
necessary to secure it. 

Beneficent even in the rigours which your high 
office compels you to authorise, you have given a 
thousand proofs of your inclination to alleviate 
evils which the preservation of society requires: 
By your ordinances, the prisons destined to ensure 
the conviction and the chastisement of vice, are 
become more tolerable and less oppressive ; they 
are no longer a prelimiminary punishment, often 
more cruel than the final sentence. You have 
overturned the savage practice by which the 
Courts of Justice were authorised to put persons 
accused, or only suspected, to the torture, in order 



31 MEMOIR.S OF 

to try if Iiy ihuso means they could not render 
ihcm criminal. 

You are far from suspecting, that in your 
kingdom, in your capital, under your eyes, there 
exists a place specially devoted to perpetuate on 
inn<x;enre a queMon infmitely more cruel than all 
the preparatory questions you have proscribed ; for 
these latter racked only the body ; whereas those 
of the Bastille torment the lx>dy, the more effectu- 
ally to distract the mind. You are far from 
suspecting, that they make arbitrary additions of 
their own to this infernal regimen ; that the 
sul)altern agents, appointed to maintain it, finds 
both satisfaction and profit in abusing it ; that like 
those ravenous dogs, who tear and bite the game 
in fetching it, they take a pleasure in barbarity, 
when all that is recjuircd in them is fidelity and 
obedience. 

But you shall continue no longer in this 
ignorance. Direct your eyes to those subterranean 
sepulchres, which the light has never enlivened 
with its presence. To enable me to point them 
out to you, two events were requisite, the one no 
Ic'js singular than the other ; that I should enter 
them, and find my way out again. The second, 
which I owe to you alone, assures me, that the 
knowledge, for which I am indebted to the fint, 
will not be unattended with advantage. 

It will indeed cost me my Country. The 



THE BASTILLE. 33 

necessity of seeking for a loiiib among strangers, 
alas \ among enemies, will be the $ole reward of 
all the sacrifices I have made to her. This is the 
last i and I shall be repaid for all the others, if 
this last should not be fruitless. 

But it cannot be so : your heart is touched with 
sensibility ; you shew marks of commiseration, of 
indignation : those emotions surely cannot arise 
in vain. Endued with all the power of a God to 
protect your subjects, and honoured with all his 
attributes, when you exert it, give to Europe, give 
to the world the sight of a miracle, which you are 
worthy to perform, Speak the word ; at the 
sound of your voice, we shall behold the downfall 
of that modern Jericho, a thousand times more 
deserving than the ancient of the thunder of 
heaven, and the curse of men. The reward of 
this noble effort will be an accumulation of glory, 
an increase of the affection of your people for your 
person and family, and the universal benediction, 
not only of the present, but of every age to the 
remotest posterity. 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. 

[One of the most curious of the many mysteries 
in which the Bastille has played a part, is that 
known as the Diamond Necklace. 

The Diamond Necklace so fatal to the peaceof 



34 MEMOIRS OF 

the unfurtunatc Marie Antoinette, was originally 
made in 1774 for the Countess Dubarry, mistress 
of Louis XV. Before it was finished, the king 
died, Dubarry was disgraced, and the jeweller, 
Uoehmcr, was in despair at having so costly a jewel 
on his hands. Carlyle thus describes this princely 
ornament, the costliest ever made : — ** A row of 
seventeen glorious diamonds, as large almost as 
filberts, encircle, not too tightly, the neck a^ first 
time. Looser, gracefully fastened thrice to these, 
a three-wreathed festoon and pendants enough 
(simple pear-shaped, multiple star-shaped, or 
clustering amorphous) encircle it, enwreath it a 
second time. Loosest of all, softly flowing down 
from behind in priceless catenary, rush down two 
broad threefold rows ; seem to knot round them- 
selves a very queen of diamonds on the bosom, 
then rush on, again separated, as if there were 
length in plenty ; the very tassels of them were a 
fortune for some men. And now, lastly, two 
other inexpressible threefold rows, also with their 
tassels, will, when the necklace is on and clasped, 
unite themselves into a doubly -inexpressible six- 
fold row, and so stream down together or assunder 
over the hind neck — we may fancy like lambent 
zodiacal or Aurora Borealis fire. . . . It is 
valued at 1,800,000 livres ; say, in round num- 
bers and sterling money, between ;fSo,ooo and 

;^90,000.*' 



THE BASTILLE, 35 

This magnificent necklace, with its 500 and 
more of fine stones, was hawked about by Boehmer 
to all courts in vain ; he even obtained an audi* 
ence of Marie Antoinette— who had previously 
refused the jewel, the exhausted treasury not 
pennitting its purchase to be thought of — and 
with tears besought her to buy it, or i How him to 
drown himself in despair. The queen's sensible 
advice was to break it up and sell it piecemeal in 
the ordinary way, but this Boehmer could not 
bring himself to do. 

All adventuress of the name of Lamotte, whose 
husband styled himself count, invented a desperate 
plan for procuring possession of the necklace. 
She persuaded the Cardinal de Rohan, who had 
been banished from the court for ten years, and 
hoped to regain the favour of the queen, that his 
good fortune was about to return ; and by forged 
letters and false messages made him believe that 
the necklace was the price the queen had set upon 
her favour. The cardinal was to arrange the 
business details, and to become responsible for it. 
It is not necessary to recapitulate the shifts and 
tricks, even to inducing an actress to personate 
the queen at a nocturnal interview in the gardens 
of the Trianon Palace with the cardinal, to which 
Madame de Lamotte resorted, since they are told 
at length by Carlyle in one of the most amusing 
papers in his " Miscellanies " (The Diamond 



]• MEMOIRS OF 

Necklace. ) Ik>th jeweller nnd cirdin&l were iUi]>c(l 
by a marginal note, ** Hin — Marie Antoinette de 
France,*' written u})on the reduced terms Boehmer 
had come down to offer. The necklace was given 
orer to the cardinal, who handed it to the queen's 
confidential valet, or rather to a conspirator who 
impenonated him. Lamotte and Villette (the 
valet) made oflf to England with the necklace, 
b'olce it up, and sold it for what they could. 
When the day for payment of the first instalment 
came the cardinal, raging at the queen's persistent 
neglect to summon him to court, refused to pay, 
3iui iloehmer therefore addiessed the queen. De 
Rohan also, as a last resource, had gone to court, 
though uninvited. The cardinal and all the con- 
spiraloRi who could be reached were arrested. 
'The queen felt her reputation was irretrievably 
tarnished by all these plots in her name ; indeed 
the populace to the last believed her to have really 
entered into the scheme, and taunted her with it 
at her execution. Madame de Lamotte persisted 
in denying all guilt ; but after a long trial she (in 
1786) was imprisoned and branded as a thief. 
The rest confessed and were acquitted. Madame 
de Lamotte escaped from prison and from France 
at the Revolution, and died in London by falling 
or by being thrown from a window, after a career 
of misery. Her husband was not captvrcd, bat 
they do not seem to have met again. It was 



THE BASTILLE. 37 

never known exactiy what became of the 

diamonds. 

When in London, in 1789, this Comtesse de 

Valois published what she called an account of 
the matter. The book was translated from the 
original French in the same year, each volume 
being authenticated with the signature of Madame 
de Valois on page 261 (wrongly numbered 231). 
Having in my possession a copy of this book, 
which is now extremely scarce, I believe the 
reader will be glad to have a few extracts from 
this extraordinary woman's account of her imprison- 
ment in the Bastille.* — E, G^.] 

**On the I ith of August, I was carried to the 
Bastile, (already incensed against the Cardinal, 
who, in order to ensnare the Queen and save him- 
self, threw all the blame upon me ;) I perceived 
the Commissary Chenon advancing towards me ; 
who, having had his lesson from the Baron dc 



* The title of the book is : 

Memoirs of the Countess de Valois de La Motte^ 
containing a compleat justification of her conduci, 
ami an explanation of the intrgues and artifices 
used against her by her enemies^ relative to the 
Diamoiui Neck'cue ; also the correspondence between 
the Queen a fid the Cardinal de Kohatij and con- 
eluding with an Address to the King of France^ 
suppliccUiug a rt -investigation of that apparently 
mysterious business. Translated /rom the French, 
written Ity herself. 



38 MEMOIRS OF 

Breteuil, asked mc what I should say in my 
defence? — Recollecting then the letter I had 
receiTed, but unwilling to go as far as the 
anonymous writer advised me I answered, that I 
would say, the Cardinal had made me a present 
of a quantity of diamonds, without my having a 
knowledge whether or not they belonged to the 
necklace. He advised me not to pursue that 
method, representing that it would prepossess the 
King against me. That would be acknowledging 
myself a mistress to the Cardinal ; and in that 
case it would appear no wonder he should have 
made me such a present, 'say rather,* added he, 
that * he gave them to be disposed of by you, to 
his advantage, and that you have remitted to him 
the sums received for them — that will wear the 
greater air of probability, and be infinitely more 
decent for you.' 

** This was the first advice, that I confess myself 
weak enough to follow, and which, while it pro- 
duced my ruin, preserved the Cardinal; because, 
it was not possible for me to prove that I had paid 
him the money ; whereas had I pursued the mode 
I had planned, and said that he had given me a 
great number of diamonds ; he would have been 
unable to prove the contrary : but it was not till 
some considerable time after that I felt the 
difference of those two declarations. The com- 
missary, whom I plainly perceived to be the 



THE BASTILLE, 39 

instrument of the Baron de Breteuil, had made it 

his business to preveut me as much as possible 

from reflecting on my situation, and in order to 6x 

my whole attention, had given me to understand 

that the Queen would protect, and speedily bring 

me out of the Bastile : 'An additional reason,' 

said he to me, *for avoiding to speak of any 

present you have received ; because the Cardinal 

would not fail to answer, that you had told him, 

those diamonds were presented to you by the 

Queen ; in which case, her Majesty would be 

exposed, a circnmstance you must take special 

care to avoid.* In vain I represented to him, 

that did I not comprehend how I could dispense 

with mentioning the name of the Queen, in a 

business, of which she had been the essential 

source. He answered, * If you name her ^ you are 

undone,^ 

"The Law}'er Doillot, whom Mr. de Breteuil in 
like manner sent me for a Counsel, began also by 
forbidding me ever to utter the Queen's name, 
assuring me,/h?w good authority^ that she ivould 
protect me. On the other hand, the Cardinal's 
party sought to engross me to themselves. De 
Launey, Governor of the Bastille, devoted to the 
house of Rohan, had placed near me, a certain 
Abb^ I equele, Chaplain to that horrid prison ; 
whose principal employ was to pass from the 
Cardinal's apartment to mine, from mine to the 



40 MEMOIRS OF 

Cardinal'ik, and to concert our respective answers 
aj^ntt the time we were to underj^o our ex- 
aminations. 

'* From every thing I have related, it appears 
that I was nearly in the caae of a patient, to whom 
one physician says: Mf you eat you will die of 
indigestion ;' another, * if yoo do not eat you'll 
|>crith throuf;h mere *want/ The foot is, that 
die I must i for seeing before my eyes the sw^rdox 
P»is9my in case I mentioned the Queen's name, I 
took care not to do it ; but then by not naming 
her, I tixed upon myself the guilt of purloining 
the necklace. — And indeed, from the moment it 
was apparent the Cardinal would extricate him- 
self, either through the treachery or inability of 
my counsel, it became clear, that a victim must 
fall, and that I was destined to be the sacrifice. 
It is at once shocking and remarkable, that both 
the judges and evidences united to aim the mortal 
blow at me. The epitome of the examinations 
(which the public never had knowledge of, but 
through the unfaithful narrative of the impudent 
lawyer Target) would impress the mind with 
horror, if the records that contain it, were exposed 
to every eye. I will adduce a few passages, which 
I cannot have forged. 

*'We must iK>t lose sight of a fact I have already 
mentioned, and which is now universally known ; 
that is, that as well in the previous ioterrogatorirs, 



THE BASTILLE. 41 

as ki the examinations, neither the Carclinal nor 
fifiyself ev^er Jittered one wor4 of truth ; the reascui 
of which is very pUio : that is, bad we done so, it 
was under peaaliy of forfeiting our lives. Neither 
the Cardinal nor myself w«j:e to name the Queen ; 
what therefore coidd we say, that bore resemUance 
to what the truth reaSly was ? — Secondly, as I 
have also previously observed, both of us being 
prepared to utter nothing but untruths, our deposi- 
tions, declarations and various speeches, were a 
ready calculated game, in which it is evident, that, 
seeing die immense inequalities of our stations, the 
advantage could not be on my side ; ibr I played 
the weak hand against whom ? a great Queen and 
a powerful Lordi Was it possible that evidences, 
of the cast of those who appeared in this affair, 
should waver a moment between me and either of 
my adverse parties? — and indeed, what was tbe 
consequence? Why, that in all -the affidavits, 
obtained at a vast expence, marks of bribery and 
corruption stare me in the face ? I ask pardon of 
Monsieur Dupuis de Marc^, solicitor in the iniqui- 
tous prosecution, but I can prove him to iiave 
prevaricated to a scandalous excess. Let us refer 
only to one circumstance, the iniquity of the 
sentence, which crowned all the iniquities practised 
against me. Her Majesty was a powerful Queen, 
the Cardinal as powerful a Prince : I had nothing 
but the eiame of Valois to render me of any oon- 
sequence. E 



4» MEMOIRS OF 

**Oiie (lay I was in reality ^ wicked^ as those 
gentry were pleased to call me. They confronted 
me with Ca$;Uostro, and that Mountebank, as rude 
as he is shameless, took the liberty to treat me 
with unbecoming language, which proved wonder- 
ittUy entertaining to Mr. Dupuis de Marc^. I 
quickly put an end to the scene, by — ^throwing a 
candlestick at the quack's head, and turning 
towards Monsieur the Solicitor, I told him, that 
if he bad an inclination to heighten the denottement 
of the farce, I requested he would supply me with 
a broom-stick. It was on that occasion I dis- 
covered a fresh piece of villainy in the junto, 
dgliostro enraged and foaming at the mouth, said 
to me — * He will come, thy Villette, * he will 

come; it is he that will speak.' From what did 

he know that? How did he know it? 

Why did he know it ? It was then the time for 

interrogatories and examinations 1 saw no soul 

living, and that knave Cagliostro knew every 
thing ! Can there be a more striking proof of the 
scandalous confederacy that reigned between the 
accused, the prosecutors, the evidences and the 
judges ? My encounter with Cagliostro originated 
from a circumstance rather ludicrous. He ob- 
stinately denied the cabalistic scenes acted at the 
Cardinal's, particularly the one in which he had 

CAUSED MY NIECE TO SEE THE QUEEN IN A 
BOTTLE, ACCOMPANIED BY THE GKAND COPHTI, 






THE BASTILLE. 43 

AND THE Angel Michael, who were de- 
claring TO HER Majesty she should be 
DELIVERED OF A MALE CHILD, &c. On that Occa- 
sion, I told him, I knew how much the Queen 
despised him, that she called him a meer mounte- 
bank, an impostor, in short I acquainted him with 
those terms of disdain, in which she had refused 

the Cardinal her consent to see Cagliostra 

' apropos,' said I to him, * Grand Cophti, has 
your prayer produced its efi'ect ? If it has so 
much efficacy, why don't you use it to get out of 
this place ? ' It was on that account he flew into 
a rage, and talked to me impertinently. The 
Solicitor asked what the purport of that prayer 
was ; but as I had already entertained him suffi- 
ciently, I did not think proper to afford him 
farther satisfaction : I answered, that Cagliostro 
perfectly understood me, and that was sufficient ; 
but I will show more complaisance to the public. 
The truth is, that at the period when the Queen 
wrote to the Cardinal, the subjoined letters in 
which she complained of the "vexatious behaviour 
of the Polignacs, &c." Cagliostro, whom he con- 
sulted, if his fingers did but ache, told him, '*he 
had a secret for getting rid of people who gave 
umbrage ;'* and at the same time gave him two 
prayers with the manner uf using them." The 
Prince's first care was to send them to the Queen, 
recommending to her the use of them, and to put 



44 MEMOIRS OF 

fMh m thmi. As I bad the charge of delivering 
thoM ptcckMu aoMileti, the <^ueen imparted them 
to MM in a kiud At of laughter, and asked whether 
\hm Cardinal was guing oat oC his wits, or if he 
took her Ibc a simpleton ? I do not remember the 
Y«y woctis td those prayers, but perfectly well 
their we. One was to be applied below the left 
hMMtf the other in the pocket on the same side, 
iind wbtQ the Queen had a mind to make any one 
fiUI at her feet, she needed only to place her two 
hands OB the two prayers while she recited them, 
nt that Instant all were to be prostrate, all were to 

be ai her command, and perform her will : a 

ctrannstance which, after exciting her mirth, 
made the Qoeen say to me : * I may very likely 
make trial of it. * 

'* Of the whole body of witnesses, that were 
collected together against me, none, (except the 
Sieur de Villette, who accused me of prevailing on 
him to sign Alary AntoineUi of Fratue^ of which 
I have related the particulars) pretended to have 
any of the necklace ; why therefore was 1 con- 
demned as having stolen it? what proofs were 
there to maintain such an accusation ? — none. 

** It has been seen, that bom of the blood of the 
Valois; /i0#r, pr9ttd and e/HbilMMS^ I blindly 
gave myself up to every means of obtaining the 
support I hoped lor ; that my intimate aoquaint- 
ance with the Cardinal de Rohan, the man the 



THE BASTHJJR. 4$ 

best saitad to serve my views, sooo kd aie oa to 
an intimacy of another kind with the Queen : that 
the CardnMl, kng since aiming at minislerial 
omnipotence} imagined from my intimacy with 
the QiMen^ I shoald prove a medium, by which he 
would obtain the fruition of his wishes, and conci- 
liate all differences which subsisted, (rom the 
recollection of those indiscretions, that had drawn 
upon him the ii owns ai Majesty. It has also been 
seen, that he did not depend solely on that 
support ; that the politics of the Emperor, with 
whom he had kept up an intercourse, n ere coin- 
cident with his views ; but by what means I am at 
a loss to conjecture, unless by his inducing the Em- 
peror to believe he could be very tiseful to him ; if 
his Imperial Majesty would assist him in procuring 
for him the reins of government. It has further 
been seen, tliat the Queen, from an unjustifiable 
partiality and attention to her brother's interests, 
cjncluded she ought to sacrifice her resentment 
against the Cardinal, to the prosecution of every 
plan for the promotion of their interests ; and even 
cherished this unpardonable Crime to such an 
excess ; as /p rective tor he arms the man whom 
she had, in her mind, previously intended to 
decapitate, as unrelentingly, as she has since 
carried on the shocking prosecution, aimed at his 
life ; the whole weight of which, and its horrid 
consequences, have artfully been contrived to be 



46 MEMOIRS OF 

the lot of female weakness, of the unhappy 
Valois de la MoiTB. 

*' The reader must have noticed that the Cardinal, 
*ruit$iJ* (as a creature of the Queen's obser>-ed) 
* Ap/A fit a moral and physical view^* adding to 
his other faults an unpardonable indiscretion, that 
of proclaiming every where those secret interviews 
of gallantry, which men of honour ever hold 
sacred ; and even speaking in terms of regret of 
the moments in which he was indulged with 
favours of so peculiar and tender a nature, by 
relating to me, to the Prince of Soubise, the Duke 
of Lauzun, the Prince of Luxembourg, the Princess 
de Gu^menee, Madam de Brienne, the Baron de 
Planta, to the Jewellers, and to twenty other 
people, how, when and in what manner he had 
those marks of favour conferred upon him at 
Trianon, and this to some persons, accompanied 
with the most indelicate and shameful anecdotes 
of the conduct of himself and his friend, counsellor 
and chymut Cagliostro. In short, all those 
monstrous reports having reached the Queen's ear, 
a very short time after the delivery of the necklace, 
his ruin was irrevocably doomed, and, indeed, was 
a circumstance at which no person seemed 
surprised. But what would appear astonishing 
beyond measure, in a private individual was, that 
the Queen, before she took any steps towards her 
revenge, did not return the necklace. The' 



THE BASTILLE, 47 

astonishment, I confess, is uaiural, but her 
prudence is on a parallel with her sensibility, her 
partialities, her affections ; a mind for ever 
waTerii^; without consideration, without stability. 

*' Six of us were equally involved in the accusa- 
tion; why, out of those six individuals, more or 
less guilty, is the Coutttess de la Molte alone 
condemned to punishment ? 

" Perhaps, Sire,* the day of retribution is come. 
I would not say perhaps^ were I certain that 
these Memoirs will appear in your august presence, 
I would then cry out — * I am now avenged, ^ 

" In this hope, which I am fond of indulging, I 
cast myself at your Majesty's feet. — Let not my 
approach alarm you, Sire : innocence cannot fade 
away, even under the malignant blasts of malice ; 
you are able, with a breath, to restore it to its 
wonted bloom, a single word from you would 
reinstate me in my honour^ before I quit your 
knees ; command only, that my cause may 

AGAIN BE PLEADED, AND THAT IT BE SUBMITTKI) 
TO THE DECISION OF STRICT AND IMPARIIAL 
JUSTICE. 

** My huoband is ready, Sire, to perform what 
he has not ceased to petition for the liberty of 
doing, to surrender himself to the prison of the 
Conciergerie; I will accompany him thither; order 



* Louis xvi. 



4S M£M0IR6 OF 

iu gales tu be upcacd to us ; let there be procbiced 
liefore ut, all tbe persons mote or less mvoived 
IB this dark transactioa. 

** Theo, Sire, yoiu Majesty, being infonned of 
the first imposition on your goodness, will hnppily 
lie guarded against a second. 

**Then the truth, which your justice and 
clemency sought for in vain, at the time of the ^st 
trial, will appear to you triumphant ! then shall 
the unhappy De Valois, casting hersell at your 
Majesty's feet, presume to petition a la&t favour : 

THE FORGIVENESS OF HER ENEMIES. 

(Signed) Countess De Valois De La Motte. 



EM) of vol. hi. 



[Collectanea BDamantnca.] 




MEMOIRS OF THE BASTILLE. 




XOLLECTAKEA aDaMANTjEA.--1V.: 



MEMOIRS 

OF 

THE BASTILLE. 

Cratflste^ from t)e ;^rrtir) 

car THE CELEBRATED 

Mr. LIXGUET. 

who was imprisoned there from 
september 1780 to may 1782. 



EDMUND GOLDSMID, F.R.H.S. 



VOL. IV. 



PRIVATELY PRINTED. 

EDINBURGH. 

1887. 



. u I L E B E ) 






y 



Tkis Edition is limiUdto 275 snudl-paper and 75 
large-paper copies. 



MEMOIRS 

OF 

THE BASTILLE. 

PART IV. 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



THE HISTORY OF THE BASTILLE. 

There have been three of that name at Paris 
—the Bastille du Temple, the Bastille of St. 
Denis, and that of the Rue St. Antoine. It is 
the last which has obtained historical celebrity, 
and is usually denominated The Bastille. This 
fortress stood at the east end of Paris, on 
the north side ol the Seine. It was originally 



THE HISTORY <)F 

intended for the protection of the city, but after- 
wards was used as a state prison. Ilugues 
d'Aubriot, prcvost dcs marchands in the reign of 
Charles V., laid the first stone on the 22nd of 
April, 1369, by the order of that king. The 
Bastille consisted at first of two round towers, 
with an entrance between them. Afterwards, to 
render it stronger, two additional towers, parallel 
to the two first, were built, and the whole connected 
by walls. The building, however, was not com- 
pleted till 1383, in the reign of Charles VI., when 
four more towers were added, of the same dimen- 
sions, and at ecjual distances from the first four, 
and the whole eight were united by masonry of 
great thickness, in which were constructed a great 
number of apartments and offices. The entrance 
to the city by the original gate was closed, and the 
road carried without the building. In 1634 a 
fosse, 120 feet wide and 25 feet deep, was dug all 
round ; and beyond that a stone wall, 36 feet high, 
was built all round. Thus the Bastille became, 
from a fortified gate, one of the strongest fortresses 
of the kind in Europe. The towers contained 
several octagonal rooms, one above the other, 
secured with double doors, and without fire-places, 
each having one window pierced In the walls, 
which were rather more than 6 feet thick, unglazed, 
and with iron gratings. The only article of 
furniture, if it may be so called, was an iron 



THE BASTILLE. ^ 

grating, raised about six inches from the floor, to 
receive the prisoner's mattress, and prevent its 
decay from the damp of the stone floor. To each 
tower there was a way by a narrow winding stair- 
case. The apartments constructed in the walls 
which connected the towers were larger and more 
commodious than the others, and were provided 
with fire-places and chimneys, but with similar 
precautions for preventing the escape of prisoners. 
The rest of the Bastille consisted of two open 
courts — the larger, io8 feet by 77 feet, called the 
Great Court ; the smaller, 77 feet by 45 feet, called 
the Court of the Well, was separated from the 
first by a range of buildings and offices, having a 
passage through them. The height of the building 
within was 78 feet, but greater on the outside next 
the fosse. 

This prison was used for the confinement of 
persons considered dangerous by the government, 
who exercised their power in the most despotic 
manner. In general the treatment seems to have 
been very severe. The only prisoners who ever 
effected their escape from the Bastille were two 
persons of the name of Latude and D' Aligre, the 
narrative of which, published by Latude, is 
extremely interesting. Of all the prisoners in the 
Bastille none have excited curiosity so strongly as 
the still unknown person usually called the Man 
with the Iron Mask. 



5 THE HISTORY OF 

The HaMillc was Ixjsicgcd and taken three timej> 
— in 14 18, I>y the Hurgundians; in 1594, by Henry 
IV. ; and on the 14th of July, 1789, by the 
Parisians, from which day the French Revolution 
may be dated. On the latter most memorable 
occasion the garrison consisted of eighty-two old 
•* Invalides," reinforced by thirty-two young 
soldiers of the Swiss Guard, and there was but one 
day's provision. The governor, De Launay, was 
asked for arms by deputation after deputation of 
the newly formed National Guard, which he 
refused, answering through closed gates, according 
to royal orders. The mob began to gather towards 
noon, and some shots were fired at the sentries. 
TThe drawbridge being lowered to let out a certain 
elector, Thuriot, who had been advising surrender, 
a number of citizens rushed in and refused to quit 
the outer court, whereupon De Launey drew up 
the drawbridge, making these prisoners, and fired 
on the mob outside. But those within the gates 
mounted, on bayonets stuck into the wall, to 
where the chains could be reached, and a cart- 
wright named Louis Toumay (an old soldier^ 
too) cut asunder the chains with an axe amid a hail 
of fire from the garrison. The drawbridge fell, 
and the mob, now in full insurrection, filled the 
outer court ; cannon (one a state-present of the 
King of Siam) were procured, and volunteer 
gunners were freely forthcoming, many being old 



THE BASTIl I P. \i 

ioffficTL. FucdiKn came too, am) trievl t\> \lrtM\oh 

riie ;yjtiIaou to reader their wea|M>ns useless ) \\\\\ 

tfie Sxce of char pomps was insutKcient. SUrtW 

St £iBedectiBl]y to smoke out the |«i\rriHon \ 

jcxacd in the firing. Now \\\\\\ then a 

<inmfafiinn with s flag of truce arriveil frou) thi) 

aswn-hallr qnsetlr ignored always by IK* I.uuurtV, 

So c&ingii vent on from one till five v>Vlook. Then 

the Swiss Goard at the gate oflfereil io surremler it 

i i nu i uniri weie granted to all ; ami liein^ unsweiiul 

firvooiablj, "on the faith of an ofticer," hy one wl 

the gentlemen directing the mob (an ex-iioltlieOi 

they lowered the inner drawhriil|;e, i\\\\\ \\\n 

Bastille had £dlen. The ** faith of nn oOieei " wn^i 

powerless to restrain the moh from luuideilni 

poor De Launaj and several more ofthe g.ui Uiin i 

the rest were saved by the Gardes Krt\ni^'iiiM«>i with 

difficalty. All during the day the Hurnn dp 

Besenval lay with a small but cholee body \\\ 

troops on the other side of Pariti, but nn tudn^ 

from the court reached him in responne (A hU 

appeals, and at dusk he marched to \'iMi>ttilltt«, 

The king, kept in ignorance of what hud occniitul, 

was informed of it late at nij^ht by the Duke dn 

Liancourt. **Why, it's a revolt," miid piMir l«<iuU 

XVI. "Sire," answered De Lluneouil, In h 

phrase which has become hiHtorical, ** It U uttl ii 

revolt, it is a revolution." 

Seven prisoners were found in the lltuline, itnd 

It 



lO NOiRS ASn II.I.PSTKATIONS. 

were carried in procession through Paris, wiih 
seven heads on pikes to match their number, and 
the keys of the fortress Iwrne aloft. These keys 
were sent to C George Washington by the city of 
Paris, and the Hastille itself was demolished. 
Day after day, and even month after month, 
"patriots** worked at overthrowing the huge 
structure ; and when all was done Paris danced on 
the site, round a huge ** tree of liberty " 60 feet 
high — one cell being left in a comer of the place 
as a reminiscence. Its site is marked by a column 
in the Place de la Bastille. 

It may he useful to remark, as this incident is so 
memorable, that the actual slaughter during the 
siege was trifling ; eighty-three fell amongst the 
mob, and only one soldier of the garrison. 

In 1880 the 14th of July was decreed the 
national feast (Fete Nationale), and is celebrated 
with illuminations, fireworks, public dancing, open 
theatres, &c. 



I. BASTILLES. 

In France all the strong-holds in general nuy at 
pleasure be converted into so many Bastilles: there 
is not one of these ramparts, apparently raised against 
the enemies of the State, which may not at any 
juncture of ministerial caprice be made the grave of 
her children. However, there are only about twenty 
castles that have this special and fixed destination ; as. 



T 



mA TincKUKS at tKl^ |;atr« ol' l^4tvi« i 
Lfoos ; the lile$ Str MAi^uvrit^ \\\ 
St Michel, in Nonn^u^y ) th^ 
Cfethrat is T— i-im is Brittany ^ that of S^umur, iw 
ot Hazcu in Picarvly, &v« «^\ \v« A\\\\ 
SUti with Pmonen of St<itr i \\\ aII oI 
of the Bastirc i» foUo\vr«l ) Mn«) aU 
their Suttling Ctovernors * *r«in ki»y"» 
:-Major, Garrisons^ Enginrrntt «\v, 
consiieratioQ of this enorniou* cHprhM^ httn 
me Ministers, (amongst othcr«« Mr N<h-Ii<si, rt« 
it if saii] a £unt inclination to a reform ) if thin nhttuld 
be effected, it would be very shnmrful th^l II \\a\\ 
dsermotive. A few days ngv\ on thia ourt«(on, 
of the Toungest, and most rlov|ucnt Oi til out In 
said with indignation, **Supprr«<t tl«o ll((a|ilU> 
timM^h Economy !" 

U. AN ANECPOTK OF MKNMV IV, 

There is an anecdote in the Mciu«>tiii of HullVi 
littk attended to perhaps by moKt rrinlrin, whiih llu« 
name brings to my mind, and to wiiiih I iitnnol 
refuse a place here. 

Henry the Fourth, in spite of his oM tt^r itnd \\\i 
virtues, had, in his latter dnys, given wny ttt n (Mmiiou 
equally shameful and ridiculous! lie vvtis in tovr v\ilh 
the Princess of Condc, his nephew's wile. Mr ImiI 
married her to him, in hopes tliut beinit younn, disti 



* See Part II. 



12 NOTKS AM) II.I.rSTKATIONS. 

pated, and avaricious, he might possibly by pleasures, 
and by money, be blinded to his wife's conduct. No 
such thing : the young Prince wanted neither to 
amuse, nor enrich himself: he took his wife to 
Brussels, without saying a word of it to any body. 

This flight could not but be approved by all people 
of probity ; in the Council of the King, it was treated 
as an Affair of State. All the Ministers, first one, 
and then another, gave their opinions gravely on the 
means of bringing back to the arms of the King, with 
all possible haste, a Mistress whom the disobliging 
Husband had dared to take away from him. Some of 
them declared for war ; and when it came to the turn 
of the Due de Sully, he began his opinion in these 
words : ''If you had left the matter to me three 
months ago, I would have had your man in the 
Bastille, or I'd have answer'd for it at ray peril. " -f* 

It was in full Council that this language was held ! 
he who held it was one of the most virtuous Ministers 
that France ever had ; he against whom it was held, 
was a Prince of the Blood ; and the crime of this 
Prince of the Blood, adjudged worthy of the Bastille, 
was that of having a pretty wife, and not choosing that 
she should be the mistress of his uncle. 

Readers, reflect ! 



1 1 quote from memoty: I may be mistaken in a word or two } 
but I am sure I am not misuken on the (act, nor in the phrase. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. I3 

III. ȣNNEVILLE'8 history or the FRENCH INOUISITIQN. 

I do not i^ace in the class of Memoirs to be 
consolted on the detail of this Trophonius's cave, a 
certain history of the French Inquisition, written by 
Constantine de Renneville. This book, now become 
scarce, and dear on account of its scarcity, contains 
nothing interesting, or even true, but the title. It is 
a medley of disgusting nonsense, and absurd fables. 

We read there, for instance, that a prisoner having 
been shut up in the subterranean dungeons of one of 
the towers, tore up with his hands so many of the 
foundation-stones, that he made the tower shake ; and 
that the affrighted Governor was forced to lodge this 
new Samson in the most superb apartment of the 
castle, in order to prevent its fall. The author of this 
tale did not know, then, that the walls of the Bastille, 
even in their thinnest parts, are at least twelve feet 
thick, and in others, even thirty, forty, or fifty ; that 
they are of the finest freestone, and consequently as 
solid as the hearts of the keepers are relentless. 

Besides, Renneville speaks only of the tortures 
inflicted on the body. It is true, that these are not 
spared in this place, where every method of rendering 
existence insupportable is put in practice : but it is not 
on this resource that the interrogators of the order of 
St. Louis, who are charged with the barbarous office, 
place their chief dependence : it is the soul that they 
torture j and that is infinitely more ingenious. 



14 NOTKS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

IV. SWORD V. GOWN. 

This oflicer is the Lieutenant General of the 
Polke. He is the real administrator of the Bastille, 
tne Governor in chief of that castle : it is through 
him that all orders pais : he has no superior in that 
district, but the direct Minister for the department of 
Paris. 

This association of the Robe with the Sword, of a 
Magistrate with armed Mercenaries, for the purpose 
of completing an oppression which the Laws proscribe, 
■ad which the Robe, which the Magistracy profess to 
hold in abhorrence, is an inconsistency, of which no 
iottance is to be found but in France. Nor is it to 
alieviate this oppression that the administration of it 
is confided to a Master of the Requests : it is to render 
it in a manner legitimate, or however legal if it were 
possible. 

The troops of the general Farm, the Soldiers of the 
Finance, in France have a right to perform civil and 
judicial acts ; to draw up verbal processes ; to make 
those whom they arrest, and whom they search, 
undergo necessary interrogatories. The troops of the 
King, the military of the Nation, have not this right. 
As it is these who guard the Bastille, it was necessary 
to join with them one who was invested with it, in 
order to proceed to what is there called Veriaal process. 
or Interrogatories, when they deign to amose them- 
selves with these formalities. This is the employment 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 1 5 

of the Lieut*!nant of the Police, and the occasion of 
the power with which he hat been endued. 

What is pleasant enough, if any thing relative to 
the Bastille can be so, what is a farther proof of the 
consistency of French ideas, is, that the robe, which 
here gives him a title of superiority, excludes every 
other magistrate from it. The Chancellor himself 
would not be admitted at the Bastille, unless indeed 
he were sent there as a prisoner. When the Parlia- 
ment (which is sometimes the case, being another 
consequence of the same judicious princif^e) accepts 
Commissions in order to give judgment on prisoner! 
lodged in the Bastille, the Judges are not allowed to 
enter the castle : it is at the gate that they hold their 
session, and that the culprit, or rather the victim, is 
brought out to them : witness M. de Laily, &c. So 
that these superior Magistrates, so proud, and so 
despotic, have not even the right to inspect those 
places where a subaltern exercises an unbounded 
authority. 

What finally reconciles every kind of contradiction, 
and surpasses all idea, is, that the acts passed by this 
Magistrate, expressly called in, expressly instituted, to 
give them an appearance of legality, are formally 
renounced and proscribed by the Tribunals of which 
he continues to be a member ; and that as often as 
they are presened to them. They condemn, at illegal 
and tyrannical, in the King's name, on his behalf, and 
in words they make him speak, those very proceedings 



I6 NOTFS ANO II.U'STRATIONS. 

which have been carried on in the King's name, on 
his behalff and in words he is made to speak, by one 
of their fraternity at the Bastille ; and even the same 
man sitting at the Chatelet at Lieutenant of Police, 
in the Parliament as Master of Requests, shall reject 
with horror, and declare criminal, on the morrow, the 
^ry pieces which, in quality of King's Commissary, 
he shall have extorted at the Faubourg St. Antoine, 
at Vincennes, &c., and authenticated with his own 
s^nature, the day before. 

These absurdities render the French Legislation 
ridiculous in the eyes of foreigners ; but unhappily 
they render it much more oppressive to the natives. 

V. THK caots or st. louis. 

All the officers of the Etat Major at the Bastille 
have the Cross of St. Louis. Even those who 
have never served, as the present Governor, or who 
have served under a title which does not confer a right 
to it, as the present Major, have it by honorary grant, 
apparently made in order to give them a more respect- 
able exterior. 

After all, there is nothing astonishing in this. 
That order, so long respectable and respected, is now 
conferred even on Exempts of the Police. This 
shameful illustration of the most cowardly service that 
despotism has ever exacted, is to be impoted to M. de 
Sartinet. If the justification of it be taken up on the 
ground of the occasional utility of those employmenti. 



NOrES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 1 7 

it vonld be nrmurj then to render it common to the 
o iduij ij Jailon, and to the Hangmen : for in >hort 
ther arc also ueful men ; and certainly, in the cyt% of 
reaaaa are infinitelj above their comrades of the 
F^^t^T^** : tfaej aaght to be much less ignominious in 
die pofalk i^tnion. 

They are only the ministers of an indispensihie 
•everi^ : they are officers, and necessary ofHccrs» of a 
lavfal power : they may sometimes execute unjust 
orders 9 bat they act constantly in obedience to justice 
and the laws. They are certain that the unfortunate 
being who is delivered to them, either has had, or will 
have, the means of defending himself : they are sure, 
or at least most believe, that an equitable and 
impartial enquiry has preceded the rigorous decision 
under which they act. They are authorized to think 
that none but the guilty, or at least men justly 
suspected, have ever been the objects of them. 

But an Exempt of the Police, an officer of the 

Bastille, are sure of exactly the contrary : thry know 

that they are violating the laws, and that thrir S[iecial 

destination is to violate them : they know that three 

fourths of the victims given to thcni to crucify are 

innocent ; that if there had been any wclt-groundeil 

pretext for judicially loading them with chains, the 

more concise method, by Lettre-de-cachety wonld not 

be adopted : they know, in short, were it not for the 

bayonets which surrounded them, that their process is 

ready made in the rituals of the Courts of Justice, as 

C 



l8 NOTRS AND II.I.ITSTRATIONS. 

well at in the heart of every cititen ; nnd that an 
ignominious punishment would be the just reward of 
their infamous compliance. 

Thejr know it ! and they give themselves up the 
willing instruments of these outrages, these Ltttret-dt- 
cachet ! The hungry Exempt counts upon his fingers 
the number of Louis-itors with which every new 
prisoner will give him a pretence for swelling his bills ; 
the Jail-Commandant calculates how many Crowns 
he will bring to his kitchen ; and both of them find 
the capture so much the better, as it becomes more 
lucrative to them. 

Sorely neither the regular executioner, nor his 
valets, carry the degradation of avarice, and the 
forgetfulness of every kind of shame, as well as 
remorse, to such an extreme degree. 

Judging then rationally, and submitting prejudice to 
reflection, I ask which of these two men mutt appear 
more odious in the eyes of society i Which of the 
two deserves the greater share of contempt and 
reproach ? 

VI. THE COUNT OK VEaCENNXS. 

See my Letter to thit Minitter, printed in 1777. 
I have not mentioned thit letter, nor the noite it has 
made, at one of the cautes of my impritonnient, 
becaute it would be accusing the Count de Vergennet 
point-blank of an impotture, of an hypocrisy^ too 
directly contrary to the virtue, the franknets» of which 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. I9 

lie makes profession : but it is very true, however, 
tbat after I kad had the confident simplicity to repass 
the lea upon his parole, some of my intelligent friends 
c o n s tan tly forwamed me of what happened to me 
on tlie 27th of September, 1780 : they were incessantly 
TCftaixag to me, that sooner or later the Count de 
Vc jgenu es would contrive to reconcile the pleasure of 
mvnge with the glory of having appeare<1 to pardon. 
Ought the conformity between their predictions and 
the event to preponderate against the confidence inspired 
by the Vutaes of the Count de Vergennes } 

vn. PERSONAL. 

To reveal the object of this sacrifice, would be 
to destroy the merit of it. I might be allowed, 
perhaps, and it might interest my pride and my 
revenge, to revoke my word, as the Ministers of 
France have violated theirs : but I have not the 
honour of being a Minister. An oath tyrannically and 
unjustly extorted is never binding ; a promise volun- 
tarily made must always bind. 

VIII. ARREST OP LINGUET. 

It was in broad day-light, at high noon, in the 
most public street, the greatest thoroughfare of 
Paris, that I was arrested, before the eyes of ten thou- 
sand people brought together in an instant ; I might 
say convoked. My coachman, my footman, or rather 
those of the Sieur Le Quesne, and consequently of the 



20 NOIRS AND II.I.rsTRATIONS. 

Polke, liiJ not conceal my name from any body. The 
malignity of this affectation will be felt by those who 
consider, that on the most serious, nay, the most 
urgent occasions, it is always an hour of darkness, and 
secrecy, that is chosen for those violent proceedings : 
but the ministry, who were seeking vengeance in this, 
who knew that there was no advantage to be drawn 
from it, beside the opprobium and cruelty with which 
my imprisonment might be accompanied, were resolved 
to make me drink off the bitter potion, even to its 
▼ery dregs. 

It must be added, that the Lieutenant of the Police, 
to whom, according to my usual circumspection and 
frankness, I had paid my first visit, every time I went to 
Paris, since 1777, had appointed me to be at his house 
on that day, at nine in the evening. We were to have 
talked of the LXXIst Number of the Annals, which 
was not yet distributed. This was the very day on 
which he caused me to be arrested at noon, with the 
disgrace which has been just now seen. And after 
that, they kept me twenty months in impenetrable 
secrecy ; and they made the consequence of this out- 
rage as mysterious as the outrage itself was notorious ! 
What was the object of this ? Is it necessary to ask? 
The openness of the arrest furnished occassion to say, 
and the mysteriousness of its consequences to bdie?^ 
every thing against me. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 21 

IX. M. DE LA GREZ£. 

It is not the Count d'Adhemar, Minister 
Plenipotentiary from the Court of France and 
Brussels, that is here alluded to. I can suppose that 
a man of condition, who had never had cause to be 
dissatisfied with me, would on this occasion have 
supported the dignity of his character, and felt how ill 
it would become him to associate with the Familiars 
of the Police of Paris, in order to consummate so 
unjust, and so odious, a system of plunder. 

But he was absent : the affair was in the hands of 
a man named La Greze, who is sometimes his steward, 
sometimes his secretary, &c. and sometimes his repre- 
sentative ; a man whose equivocal birth is his least 
defect, and whose original occupation could not 
naturally have led him to figure in the Diplomatic 
Corps. 

This strange Minister found in the Exempt of the, 
Police of Paris, and in his deputy, two worthy 
colleagues. He seconded them with all his might, 
and so much the more easily, as he had it in his 
power, at least in the first moments, to cover his 
treacheries under the guise of kindness and friendly 
zeaL He had, I confess, surprised my confidence : I 
had not refused it to a man who seemed to have the 
honour of possessing that of the Government of m) 
Country. He was with me every day, and all the day 

At the instant of the disaster, he was the counsellor 



23 NOTKS A(<1> ll.Ll STKAllONS. 

preferred by the Person, who, sharing it with mCf had 
the further misfortune of being obliged to labour in 
taking precautions to diminish it. 

It may not be impertinent to insert, on this 
occasion, an anecdote pleasant enough at this hour, 
but which was not so then. 

A principal object was, to save my papers. Not 
that any thing criminal could have been found in 
them t but it was my fortune, and more than my 
furtonc. Besides, they contained many important 
secrets which did not belong to me : the confidence of 
many worthy people having followed me in my 
retreat, notwithstanding my absolute renunciation of 
the Bar ; the repose and honour of several families 
depended on the preservation of my cabinet. 

La Greze being consulted, thought the best expedient 
was to throw the most valuable of the papers into the 
imperial of my carriage, to convey them to a country- 
house which I had at three leagues from Brussels, and 
to bury the whole there in the hay with which the 
lofts were filled : he assisted in disguise, at midnight, 
at the execution o( his own project, constantly 
repeating that he was risking his place, and his fortune 
to render me this service : he worked himself: he saw 
the imperial loaded : he was confident that the carriage 
would depart at the opening of the gates ; and was 
continually swearing, in a tone easily penetrated, that, 
as he was the sole confident of this deposit, he would 
be impenetrable. 



VOTES AND ILLUS1 RAX IONS. 23 

The carriage did indeed arrive in the country at 
wen D^d.-ick in the mamrag. At eight, the Exempt 
of the Pariaian Police was in my granary : he un- 
hooked the ixnperia! : he broke the padlock : he found 
there — mhat ? A qnantity of straw ! 

The e«>Ueui e ^aosibility affected by La Greic in 
his oaths, had betrayed him : and advantage wax 
taken of the moment when he was gone to supper, or 
rather to inform the Exempt, to make the exchnngr. 

The itory is pleasant ; bat the perfidy was frightful. 
The following is, if possible, still more atrocious. 

In saving such of my papers as were judged tho 
moat important, a sufficient quantity had brrn left in 
the home, to give colour to a denial thnt there were 
anv others. The Police of Brussels had scircd on ihi^ 
booty, whilst the Parisian Agent was in pursuit of one 
more valuable. He and his accomplice Ln Grrxr, 
disconcerted by the precaution 1 hnvc just rolnlrd, 
thought to indenMiify themselves by getting ponM^n^inn 
of what remained at Brussels. They found rrnji^tJimT 
in the laws of the Country. They wiihed for a power 
from me. Lc Qucsne, being called lo their aitj, had 
indeed one to produce ; but it was old : it had no 
relation to the event of the moment, nor to itn conM'- 
quences. The Magistrates of Bru^krls rrrus"il to 
acknowledge it ; and my friends yet more ntrenuou<«ly. 

It was absolutely necessary to apply to me for a new 
one : for the itch of coming at my papers was very 
pressing ; and they flattered themselves thnt under 



34 NOTRS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

this title they should bring bock even those that had 
•lipped through the net of La Greze. It was demanded 
of me ; I refused it point blank. They conjectured 
my reason. What did they do ? 

The Sieur La Greze wrote to the Lieutenant of the 
Police of Paris, that the justice of Brussels had seized 
■11 my effects ; that one part was already sold, and 
confiscated, by virtue of the Joyous Entry ; ♦ that the 
rest would soon undergo the same fate ; and the only 
means of saving it was a power from me, wherewith to 
oppose these devouring operations. In that place, 
where nothing is shown, they showed me this letter ; 
they suffered me to drench myself with the gall which 
it carried to my soul ; and they presented me a notary 
at a comforter. 

It was very necessary to obey, where I thought it 
would be useless to resist. I wished however to limit 
the procuration thus wrenched from me : they made 
use of violence to oblige me to sign it as it was. 

On my arrival at Brussels I found that the letter of 
the Sieur La Greze was false in every particular. 
Nothing had been confiscated ; quite the cjntrary : 
his accomplices, and their representatives, had alone 
been concerned in the pillage. The sight of my pro- 
curation at Brussels caused deep concern ; and though 
they were unacquainted with the artifices by which 

• It was ooc mine into the BastiUc, that be spoke oi; at will 
he easily conceiv.d. The Joyeoae entree ii> a particalar right of 
the Soverdgna of Brabant. 



NOTES AND ILLCSl RATIONS. 2$ 

it was obtained, they had fortunately made no con- 
cessions in conseqaence of it, except with regard to 
the articles the least essential to me ; my money, for 
instance, and those papers of which the surrender gave 
me no nneasiness. 

X. AN KXKMFT OP THK POUCE OF PARIS. 

To add to this picture of treacheries and 
meannesses, it is proper to observe, that this Exempt is 
one of those whom, in mj short aud tempestuous 
career at the Bar, I had rescued from an ill-grounded 
but virulent persecution. He was chosen, or rather he 
had offered himself not to serve me ; but because, the 
obligations he had to me being known, and having 
himself always assumed the exterior of gratitude, he 
was more proper than another to surprise the credulity 
of those, whose intelligence, and attachment to me, 
were to be dreaded. 

NOTE XI. 

This deputy was no other than the Sieur Le 
Quesne. See the particulars of that inconceivable 
treachery in the j^t/is aux &uscnj>teursy which precedes 
No. LXXII. of the Annals. 

NOTE XII. 

The Sieur La Greze caused near 500 livres to 
b: paid him, by Le Quesne, at my ex pence, for his 
good offi:e8. The latter, bringing this artlclr into 



26 NOIRS AM> ILLUSTRATIONS. 

account agjinit me, informed me that he had paid it 
by MperiDr orden. 

XIII. XVIIITM. CSNTUAY tCIXNCI. 

It will be recollected perha|it that the object 
of it was t.) transmit intelligence to the remotest 
distance, of what kind, or what length soever the 
dispatches might be, with a rapidity almost equal to 
that of the imagmation. 

The only well-grounded objection which has been 
made to it, is that this aerial post may be interrupted 
by fogs and snow. This I confess : but the snow 
continues only for some hours in the yenr ; the fogs 
only some days, at least on the Continent. A river 
overflown, a bridge broken down, or the fall of a 
horse, may equally retard for some moments, the 
ordinary communications. 

I will one day make known my ideas on this 
subject. The invention will certainly admit of being 
greatly improved, as I have no doubt it will be. I 
am persuaded that in time it will become the most 
useful instrument of commerce, and all correspondence 
of that kind ; as Electricity will be the most powerful 
agent of medicine ; and as the Fire-pump will be the 
principle of all mechanic processes which require, or 
are to communicate, great force. 

XIV. PEftSONAL. 

*' Provided ! '* ! — I am obliged to insist on this 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 2^ 

restriction. The freedom had been taken of circulat- 
ing a report, that I had promised indiscriminately not 
to write any more \ that this condition had been the 
price of my liberty. That is not true. The truth is, 
that, being exhausted by this perpetual struggle, this 
unequal conflict, where, without any weapons but 
reason and justice, I had continually encounters with 
men armed with power and intrigue, I no longer 
aspired to any thing but a peaceable obscurity. Yet 
once more ; though I was very far from expecting to 
see two years imprisonment in the Bastille succeeded 
by an unlimited exile, 1 should have patiently awaited 
at Rethel the issue of this new caprice, I should havb 
tried in good earnest to keep silence, or at least to 
suffer myself to be forgotten, if they had not presumed 
to require of me an equal indifference for my civil, as 
for my literary existence. It is with ;nuch regret, but 
most assuredly without any remorse, that I have again 
entered on my painful career. 

XV. REFUSAL TO ALLOW A WILL TO BE MADE. 

I have suppressed many things, of which the 
recital would not be so striking at this instant, as they 
must have seemed grievous to me at the time. The 
juncture is of some moment, even in affliction : a blow 
which does not affect a man in health, becomes in- 
supportable, and may prove mortal, if it falls on a 
limb already broken. But I cannot forbear to insist 
on the refusal, persevered in to the last, of permitt- 



28 NO FES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

ing me to make my will by the means of a public 
officer. 

If the motive to it was not the most cruel caprice 
that any Minister was ever licentious enough to give 
into, its object was a prevarication yet more base : 
they meant, then, by rendering me incapable of dis- 
posing of the remains of my fortune, to favour Le 
Quesne, who had the whole in his possession : they 
intended, if 1 had died, to spare him the necessity of 
accounting to my family for more than just what he 
should have thought proper ; and thus to pay for his 
treacheries, not only at my expence, but at that of my 
heirs likewise. Having given me no account ; having 
in his hands all my vouchers, all my eflFects, without 
exception ; being assured, by his connections with the 
Police, Sk. that a will written with my own hand 
would never go out of my sepulchre without his 
consent ; he must certainly have opposed every 
notarial act, of which It would be more difficult to 
control the dispositions, or obliterate the traces. 

From which of these two causes did the refusal of 
the testament arise ? I do not know : perhaps they 
both conduced ; but, supposing only one of them, have 
1 not been justified in saying that the refusal was 
unexampled even in the history of the crimes of the 
Bastille ? 

XVI. PKftSONAL. 

Perhaps nothing short of this last misfortune 
could have cured me of my extravagant Patriotism t 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 29 

the caustic was violent ; but the cure, however, is 
radical. 

Now, that I can laugh, I have been entertained by 
a simple reflection, which on this occasion escaped a 
man who acts an important part in the Ministry. 
When my retreat to London, and my design of 
publishing these Memoirs, were mentioned to him ; 
But, says he, he means then to shut the gates of France 
against himself for ever ! But — ^have these Gentlemen 
then some more Lettru-de'Cachet to dispose of; and 
would they be very solicitous to honour me with the 
preference ? 

XVII. linguet's answer. 

It is by chance that I have kept a copy of this 
answer. I must yield to the inclination of giving 
here at least the conclusion of it. After having 
particularised, in an affecting manner, the causes that 
had extorted that letter from me, I added : *' He 
hopes the King will vouchsafe to consider it as a 

private affair ; an affair quite secret, unknown 

that this letter was to be looked upon only as the 
result of a first emotion, which the laws no where 
subject to punishment, and for which humanity itself 
makes allowances ; that, in short, in what light 
soever it is viewed, it ought not to efface the remem- 
brance of those services, which the respondent has all 
his lifetime assiduously endeavoured to render, to the 
many individuals whom he has defended and saved in 



JO NOTE:> AM) ILLUSTRATIONS. 

the courts of justice ; to the public, whom he has 
laboured to enlighten by hit writings ; to religion, to 
the lawt, to morality, which he hat always Krupuloutly 
rctpectefl : nor of that delicacy which led him to 
Mcrifke, on the 6r«t approach of the rupture, an 
etCablishment already formed in Enj^land, in order to 
be nearer to France ; nor of the firmnett with which 
he hat erery where difFuted the praitet, and etpouted 
the interettt of hit Prince and hit Country, eren in the 
midat of their enemies, at hit Annals particularly 
evince ; nor of the design which he has always enter- 
tained, and announced, of returning to France, of 
settling there, of carrying thither hit fortune, and of 
living tubject to the lawt of the Sovereign under 
whom Providence had placed him ; a detign which 
%vat one of the principal objectt of the present journey, 
and but for which he should not have fallen into the 
mitfortnne he at present labours under. 

*' One word more, and he will have done. In thus 
pointing out the considerations which may extenuate 
hit fault, he does not presume, however, wholly to 
excuse it : he withes only to o6fier to the King's 
clemency some motives for shortening the punishment, 
and to M. de Duras's generosity, for soliciting the 
forgiveness of it." 

After this answer, I heard not a word more said of 
it. I only kamt on my enlargement, that it had 
been matter of pleasantry for the people ia ofiiee under 
the Count de Vergtnaes. Anongst othen^ the Sleor 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 3 1 

Moreau, one of his favorite secretaries, reading it to 
bis friends, gave himself airs at the conclusion, saying, 
** Hah ! hah ! he is now pbying the Sycophant/' 

Louis ! just and beneficent Prince, is it thus then 
that the mercenary agents of those Ministers who 
deceive you, add insults to the afflictions of your sub*' 
jects whom they oppress ! Is it thus that they dare 
burlesque the respectful returns of confidence in, and 
lubmission to you ! Is it thus that an offence, of 
which twenty months' barbarity has been the fruit, is 
recognised and examined ? 

XVIU. ARE THESE COPIES IN CIRCULATION ? 

1 was assured, after my enlargement, th^t pre- 
tended copies of this letter were in circulation. I 
here declare, that there is not possibly a single copy of 
it extant. It cannot be imagined that the Lieutenant 
of the Police has given it up to public curiosity. 
Most certainly the Marshal de Duras will no more 
expose it in future, than he has done already. And 
the hands by which my papers were withdrawn from 
the eager researches of his avengers, have had the 
same discretion. Thus this little secret is one of those 
on which public malignity will never be satisfied. 

XIX. THE CASE OP M. DE LALLY. 

To be acquainted with this personage, the reader 
may consult the 8th and 9th volumes of the 
Annals, particularly the 9th, at the 217th and follow- 



33 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

ing paget. Few lawsuits have been more atrocious, 
and none, even in France, hat been more unaccount- 
able, in its circumstances and its consequences, than 
the whole process of M. de Lally. The Parliament of 
Paris, after haying had the inconsistent meanness to 
accept a commission to judge him, and the horrid 
barbarity to punish him, by a sentence of death, for 
tome sallies of passion, excusable perhaps in erery 
point of Tiew, for some extraragancies which the very 
sentence dared not to denominate a crime, has had at 
once the meanness and the cruelty clandestinely to 
thwart a son in his petition to take off the stigma 
from his father's memory. 

The Parliament of Rouen, appointed to rerise a 
sentence already acknowledged irregular in point of 
form, already annulled in consequence, and demon- 
strated to be at least as unjust in its form, did not, 
indeed, so far prevaricate as to dare to confirm it ; 
but, in order to elude the necessity of deciding between 
justice, and a body of men of their own order, they 
chose rather to violate one of the most solemn 
regulations in the French practice, and to admit an 
interposition equally strange in its circumstances and 
absurd in itself, as insupportable in jurisprudence 1 
whence result new contentions, new questions, a new 
reference to another Parliament, that of Dijon, where 
M. de Lally will have to combat the tame prcjndicet 
the tame deference for the tpirit of party, and the 
same animotitiet. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. ;^^ 

It cannot be too often repeated, that the rest of the 
universe affords no parallel instances ; they are not 
admitted, they cannot be admitted, any where but in 
France. 

&V vivitur illic. 

But they have also there the Comic Opera, the 
Grand Opera, the Boulevards, the Elys'an Fields, the 
Mercury, &c. &c. &c. 

XX. ENGLISH FREEDOM. 

This remark is no less true than singular; and 
it alludes to an anecdote yet more extraordinary, if 
possible, than all that has preceded, but which 1 
suppress for two reasons : ist, Through respect to an 
august name, which must otherwise be brought 
forward j 2nd, Because it is more curious, mure 
poignant, than useful. The only thing it would 
prove, is the superiority which the influence of an 
atmosphere purified by Liberty, such as that of Great 
Britain, gives even to individuals, over the foulness of 
Despotism, which corrupts and enervates almost 
equally its agents, and its victims. Nor does this 
want demonstration. 

XXI. AN EXPLANATION. 

I am exceedingly concerned to keep the Mar- 
shal de Duras so long on a stage where he does 

not cut a very honourable figure : but, once more, it 

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NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 35 

XZni. STATE PRISONS. 

Here perhaps some caviller, or some member 
of Administratiuiiy may charge me with Hyperbole : 
perhaps they may pretend to affirm, that there arc few 
coantries, where there is not a prison equivalent to the 
Bastille, in which the customs mav be more shocking, 
and the abases more flagrant. By such a comparison 
may they attempt to justify, in an indirect manner, 
that abominable regimen, which every honest mind 
must revolt at, and which the most steady partisans of 
despotism could never defend but by a similiar sub- 
terfuge. 

But let us deprive them of this resource. I allow, 
that in almost every country the good of the public 
has frequently justified the exercise of extraordinary 
rigour ; but it is not true that, in any country, the 
laws, or even immemorial custom, have consecrated any 
*'hing to be put in competition with the regimen of the 
Bastille. Whatever repugnance [ may feel in hand- 
ling this disagreeable subject, with whatever disgust 
the idea of prolonging the consideration of it may 
inspire me, let us search the annals of tyranny : let us 
over-run the globe, and seek, in the history of the 
enormities of arbitrary power, for a parallel to the 
institution of the Castle which hangs, a disgraceful 
monument, over the street of St. Anthony in Paris. 

We read, for instance, that Dionysius the Elder had 
one in his palace at Syracuse : he had even, as history 



36 NOTES AM) ILLUSTRATIONS. 

informt un, practised a refinement, which, we have 
cauw to wonder, hat not been adopted by »ome of the 
•obaltern tyrants, who have followed hit steps with so 
much success in bringing to perfection the regimen of 
the Bastille. The vaults of the dungeons were undu- 
lated with such art, that every thing which was uttered 
resounded, and was heard distinctly in a closet, that 
served as a receptacle for these accumulated sounds. 
This was the observatory, or, if you will have it, the 
confession -box, where the Tyrant took post to intercept 
the secret conversation of the prisoners : and this 
curious cabinet was called the Ear. 

Nevertheless this Ear could not have been always 
faithful in its report : for they relate, that a Philo- 
sopher having been committed there by a Lettre-dc 
cachet^ and afterward released, the Tyrant asked him, 
how the prisoners employed their time in it ? ** In 
wishing for thy death," replied his captive, with 
more sincerity than discretion. That was a secret, 
then, which the Ear had not revealed, and of which 
the consequence was, if we are still to believe the story, 
another Lettre-de-cachety ordering the execution of all 
the prisoners. 

But however it may be with this latter circumstance, 
at the Ear was constructed to betray the conversation 
of the prisoners, it follows, that they were allowed to 
convene ; that they had an intercoone with each 
other : they were not abandoned to total lolitade : it 
was not, then, as it is in the Bastille. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 37 

Among the Romans there was neither Ear, nor 
Bastille. In the time of the Republic a Citizen, 
though guilty, could not be arrested till after his con- 
demnation ; and this was usually prevented by a 
voluntary exile: still less reason, therefore, had in- 
nocence to dread these arbitrary dungeons. 

Under the Emperors, Rome was not exempt from 
assassinations, sanctified by the authority of the 
sovereign power : but these sacrifices were made in 
the houses of the victims. The Lettre-de-cachet 
countersigned Sejanus, Narcissus, Tigellinus, &c. 
which commanded the execution, was notified by a 
Tribune, or a Centurion at the head of a party of 
Soldiers. The military in every part of the world, 
like the dogs who tear and devour the game, are the 
persons charged with this honourable office. 

At sight of the Ministerial Mandate, some took 
poison 'y others had recourse to the poignard ; and 
others again caused their veins to be opened. The 
Soldiers surrounded the house till the business was 
over J and then went quietly to their barracks, as if 
they had come from mounting a guard. 

Some persons will not fail to exclaim, that this is 
worse still than the Bastille. 

But without pronouncing a positive judgment on 
this subject, it is at least certain, that they did not 
envy those whose existence they were anxious to ex- 
terminate, the consolation of making their will, 
before they should quit it. 



fi NOTKS AM) I Ill's I RAl IONS. 

Under ihf worst Prince* we find that those guilty, 
or rather accused of oflences against the State, were 
subjected only to a disagreeable constraint ; not to a 
horrid captivity. They fastened one of their hands to 
that of a Soldier, and thus prevented them from 
quitting one another. Such an association certainly 
could not be very agreeable ; but it neither hindered 
Agrippa from sleeping quietly in his own house under 
Tiberius, nor St. Paul from preaching publickly under 
Nero. Was that the confinement of a Bastille ? 

The only Species of State Prison, constantly kept 
up in antient Rome, was what was called the Trans, 
portation. These were certain little islands, which 
they peopled with persons suspected by the Court. 
From these they were forbid to emigrate, on pain of 
death. I confess, that such warrants cannot on any 
principle be justified ; yet still the unfortunate persons, 
thus disfranchised, were allowed the enjoyments of 
light and air ,* they were allowed a part of their 
income j they were permitted to take some of their 
servants along with them ; they corresponded with 
their friends : in fine, if they became so weary of their 
situation, as to prefer a total dereliction of their 
country, they had in their power to escape, and they 
frequently did so. One may perceive, that this still 
falls short of the Bastille. 

The history of the Lower Empire being hr from 
exact, it is impossible to trace in detail the use made 
of Lcttrii-de-^achit, 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 39 

In the Greek empire, the Secretaries of State and 
their deputies soon discovered the advantage of 
depriving of the light those persons, whom they 
thought at the same time deserving of their attention 
and their resentment : but they never thought of these 
caves, hollowed in walls twenty or thirty feet thick : 
they made directly to the eyes themselves, instead of 
striving to render them useless : they tore them out, 
or burnt them with rods or plates of heated metal ; 
sometimes, they scalded them with boiling vinegar : 
and all by virtue of a Lettre-de-cachet. 

These State Criminals were blinded, I confess : but 
the despotic mandate, by which they were devoted to 
such martyrdom, was not founded on the Laws of the 
State : there was no Minister particularly appointed to 
the department of blinding. The Lieutenant of the 
Police of Constantinople was not, by an express brevet, 
created Imperial Commissary for the application of 
boiling vinegar, or for administering these burning 
patents. 

In modern Constantinople, that scandal of our pre- 
tended philosophy, and of our boasted humanity, there 
is a fortress, which seems to bear some affinity to the 
Bastille. I mean the Prison of the Seven Towers, 
which our travellers call a State Prison ; but which, 
by their very relations, we may perceive, is rather a 
magazine than a prison. They seldom confine in it 
any but the Ambassadors of the Christian Powers, 
who break with them \ and there they not only see 



40 NOTES AM) ILLUSTRATIONS. 

whom they please, but are even served by their own 
domestics. 

Slaves, whose ransoms are stipulated, but not paid, 
are sometimes obliged to await there the completion of 
the bargain : and it is then no less an asylum to them 
than a security to their Masters. Living at their ease, 
well fed, and often visited, it is rather an anticipation 
of liberty which they enjoy, than a captivity which 
they suffer. 

In Persia, during the time of her glory and prosperity, 
that is to say, till the civil wars, by which she has 
within half a century been depopulated, these sources 
of Ministerial vengeance not only were equally un- 
known ; but the ordinary justice had found means 
to spare persons accused, and even presumed guilty, the 
humiliation and horror of a dungeon. Their prisons 
were moveable. The man whom it was necessary for 
the preservation of the public tranquillity to secure, 
lost no more of his liberty than was requisite to prevent 
his withdrawing himself from punishment, and from 
committing any new offences. With an ingenuity 
that partook more of compassion than severity, they 
had invented a kind of portable wooden triangle, called 
the Cango ; which, fixed round his neck, and inclosing 
one of his hands, could neither be concealed, nor taken 
off I and yet did not prevent him from discharging hit 
ordinary functions. Carrying about with him, thoty 
a guard of little expense, he still retained the enjoyment 
of light and lite j the power of regulating hit affairi, 



NOTES AND ILLISTRATIOXS. 4I 

and the means of vindicating his innocence ; withoot 
ceasing to be in the hands of the cirii power charged 
with the verification of it. 

We arc uAd of bloodj executions ordered, or per« 
petrated, by drunken Monarchs : but these horrors 
were confined to the Harems ; and the institution 
alone of the Cango proves, that the general spirit of the 
nation, without excepting that of the Government, 
was tempered no less with mildness than equitjr. 

It is the same in the Empire of the Mogul, in India, 
China, and Japan. In this last country, from which 
our own restlessness has justly expdled us, we are 
assured, by the relations of those who have visited it, 
that the manners are savage, and the punishments 
equally prompt and cruel. It may be so : but, at any 
rate, the celerity wi.l compensate for the barbarity of 
an execution. They are there ignoraiit of those long 
detentions which eternise the most horrid of all 
torments, the despair produced by the uncertainty of 
the term to one's miseries. 

The man whom they disembowel, whom they pre- 
cipitate on tenter-hoolcs, whom they cut in ten thou- 
sand pieces, whom they pound alive in a mortar ; if 
it be true, that those exquisite tortures are common j 
this man, I say, has been tried ; he has had an 
opportunity of defence, of justification ; it is by the 
Magistrate, by the Laws, and not by caprice, that he 
is devoted. 

In all Asia, we cannot find a regular State Prison, 



42 NOTFS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

establithetl on the fundamental principles of Govern • 
ment, except in Ceylon. "There," says a traveller, 
'^the King has a number of prisoners, who are chained, 
tome in the ordinary prisons, others in custody of the 
Nobles. No one dares to enquire their of&nce, or the 
time they have been confined : they are kept thus for 
five or six years ; and whenever they are imprisoned, 
it if by the King's order." 

Thii is indeed somewhat like the Bastille : the 
State Mysteries of Ceylon resemble a little those of the 
street St. Antoine. But observe that we hear nothing 
of dungeons specially appointed to swallow up those 
wretches, whoss crimes and whose catastrophe are so 
imperiously consigned to silence and darkness : they 
are either shut up in the ordinary prisons, or entrusted 
to the custody of the Nobles. 

In America there are many other kinds of op- 
pression ; and in Africa likewise : but they know 
nothing of this. The Indians in the new world are 
trampled on by merciless tyrants, who are themselves 
debased by superstition : part of the African coast is 
subject to an arbitrary government, which has the evils 
and abuses alone of that which prevails in Asia. 

It it in Europe then alone that these dreadful 
scourges are to be dreaded ? and in what parts of 
Europe are we to dread them ? We know it is not 
in Great Britain. 

In Germany, the Princes are in general pretty 
de<ipotic, in the usual acceptation of the word ; that is 



NOTES AND ILLU SI RATIONS. 43 

to say, there is no barrier to obstruct the exertion 
or abuse of their authority : notwithstanding, they 
have no Bastille, nor any equivalent. 

In Denmark, I do not find that Kings, or their 
Ministers, have been tempted to keep any, since the 
times of the abominable Christiern. 

Lastly, in Russia, where, of all the countries in the 
world, their ancient manners would seem to be the 
most compatible with a Bastille and its appurtenances, 
a contrary system has been adopted. Lettres-de-cachet 
are there indeed in all their vigour; but the conse- 
quences are extremely different : a province is there 
become a Prison of State. 

In Spain, I believe there are two or three Towers 
used by the Ministry as springs of government, and 
necessary engines of the State : yet have they been 
hitherto but thinly peopled, on account of their rival 
prisons of the Inquisition. 

In Italy, as in Germany. Nevertheless, there 
exist at Rome, and at Venice, undoubted marks 
of arbitrary power ; in the one a castle, and in 
the other a tribunal, both of which are equally 
scandals to justice, and arms ever ready for the 
grasp of despotism. Yet the multitude of strangers, 
who are perpetually visiting those celebrated cities, 
proves that the use is not so frequent, as the outward 
shew is dreadful. When an Englishman or a Ham- 
burger embark for Rome, to hear oratorios, and gaze 
at St. Peter's, or to dance at a masquerade in Venice, 



44 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

their friends do not anxiously conjure them to beware 
of the Castle of Adrian, or of the Inquisition of State. 
But there is no stranger going to France, who is not 
cautioned to beware of the Bastille. 

Thus, both according to fact and opinion, the 
Bastille stands alone, an unrivalled monument. 

XXIV. MR. NICKER. 

I do not here pretend to reflect on the opera- 
tions of Mr. Neclcer. I have indeed had much 
reason to complain of him ; and also of his Wife, 
who was still more of a Minister than he was : but 
these private prejudices should not influence the judg- 
ment of an impartial writer, when he adverts to the 
public conduct of a man entrusted with power. 

NOTE XXV. 

They soon however, granted me permission to write. 

NOTE XXVII. 

Cadastre = Tariff. 

XXVIII. THE GOVERNOR. 

The Governor obtained the survivorship in the time 
of the Count de Jumilhac ; but this gentleman exacted, 
as a condition of his accepting a co-adjutor, the sum 
of an hundred thousand crowns, (which were paid to 
him) and his son's marriage with Mr. De Launay's 
daughter, thought a rich heiress ; which took place 
accordingly. 

But notwithstanding this compact, Mr. De Launay, 
being a man neither of family, nor connexions, having 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 45 

neither services to plead, nor interest to recommend 
him, might have met with a refusal, if he had not 
been so fortunate as to have a brother in the service of 
the Prince of Conti. This brother prevailed on the 
Prince to make interest with the Minister, whose 
clerks expedited their patents signed Amelot ; and to 
recompense the zeal of the younger, the happy elder 
brother secured him a pension of ten thousand livres a 
year on the revenues of his place. 

This bargain is well known in the Bastille ; there 
is not a scullion but is informed of it. But why 
should it afford matter for scandal ? Every officer 
there lies under the same predicament. The employ- 
ment of King's Lieutenant is worth about 8000 livres 
per annum : the present possessor gave his predecessor 
a sum of money ; the amount I know not : but I 
know, that he besides gives him a pension of a 
thousand crowns per annum. 

Those of the turn-keys are worth about 900 livres 
a year. They are usually filled up from some of the 
Governor's old domestics i thus are they made 
executioners, as a reward for length of service : but 
this reward itself is not gratuitous j for there is not 
one, who is not obliged either to pay a premium on 
accepting the office, or an annual stipend to some 
person or other. 



46 NOTRS AND II.I.USTRATIONS. 

XXIX. ITALIAN POISONERS. 

It is well known, that the crimes of the notorious 
BrinvillierSy in the last century, originated from the 
education which her lover had received in the Bastille. 
An Italian named Exili, whom they had appointed the 
partner of his cell, was his preceptor. 

XXX. M. DC SAITINES. 

It is not indeed the clock alone that Mr. Raymond 
Goalbert de Sartines has so ingeniously constructed. 
The inscription informs us, that he also planned the 
building where that machine is placed ; a building that 
comprehends the kitchen, the baths of the Governess, 
the kennel of the turn-keys, and the rest of the pack, 
which they call the £tat- major, except the Governor ; 
whoae dwelling, as I before observed, is without, 
though his kitchen and his Lady's baths are within : 
there are some particulars relating to these baths, not 
lets curious than those concerning the clock. 

Whether a Governor's wife bathes here or there 
appears to be a matter of perfect indiflPerence ; and so 
indeed it should be : but in the Bastille the most 
trifling circumstance has its consequences, and those 
consequences are ever afflicting. Her Ladyship's 
fa«thing-tub being situated in the interior part of the 
castle, in order to get to it, she must necessarily cross 
the court, the only place the prisoners are allowed to 
walk in. But her bckeys have to carry the water ; 
they must pass in and out ; and every time they pass. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 47 

the prisoner, who is walking, gets an order to shut 
himself up in the closet. 

Then arrive my Lady's maids : they must carry her 
Ladyship's linen, napkins, slippers, &c. The con- 
sequences would be dreadful, if a captive discovered the 
most minute of these State-secrets : each importation 
produces then another closetting. 

At length Madam herself arrives : she is of no 
small weight : her gait is stately, and the place she has 
to pass through is of tolerable extent. The sentinel, 
in order to make his court, and to recommend him- 
self for his alacrity, cries out. To the Closet ! the 
moment he perceives her : the ambulating prisoner 
must fly, and remain in the closet till she has reached 
her bathing-place ; and when she comes out again, her 
retreat is accompanied with the same formalitiei. 
The prisoner must in the same manner await in the 
closet the passage of the Mistress, the Chamber-maidt 
and the Lackeys. 

In my time a sentinel, on one of these occasions, 
having neglected to throw out the signal for flight, 
the modern Diana was seen in her deshabille. I «rtt 
the Actzon of the day : however, I underwent no 
metamorphosis ; but the unlucky Soldier was imprisoned 
for eight days ; of which I could not be ignorant, 
having myself heard the order given for hit con- 
finement. 

In other places the baths confer either health or 
pleasure. A GovemeM of the Bastille it never teiied 



48 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

with a fit of cleanliness, which does not cause in others 
several of vexation. 

XXXI. PRMONIRS' CLOTHING. 

We have spoken in the text of the prisoners' food. 
At to the clothing, the Governor has often boasted to 
me of his liberality in this particular. I do not think 
he ever honoured me with a visit, that he did not 
speak of Breeches, which he generously distributed to 
his prisoners ; for in naming them he always used the 
poMettive term. This is what I myself experienced. 



T3eE3E 3E3Nri>. 



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